The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (70 page)

millions who perished during the Stalin years. In 2001 she was

rehabilitated in the mass pardoning of political prisoners who died

or were murdered during Stalin’s terror that was instituted after the fall of communism.8

It was another six years, however – and only after considerable

and protracted legal wrangling – before the Russian Prosecutor

General’s office finally saw fit to rehabilitate Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia Romanova, their parents and brother, as ‘victims of

political repressions’.9

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No book is ever the work of a lone author beavering away in splendid

isolation and in this, my eleventh, I have more than ever before

drawn on the knowledge, expertise, generosity and goodwill of a

considerable number of people both here, in the UK, and around

the world.

I first began thinking about a book on the four Romanov sisters

when researching and writing my book
Ekaterinburg
in 2007. They were in my head and my heart then, as I walked round the city,

musing on their lives and personalities, and their tragic fate, with

constant echoes of Chekhov’s
Three Sisters
in the background; the allusion to that great play is deliberate. After
Ekaterinburg
was published in the UK in 2008 (in the USA as
The Last Days of the

Romanovs
) I had the great good fortune to encounter the wonderful network of Romanov buffs on the Royalty Weekend circuit – a

conference held annually in Ticehurst, East Sussex. From day one

I met with nothing but kindness, interest and enthusiasm for my

project and many offers to share material. The support for my book

that began at Ticehurst continued as my own network of Romanov

experts expanded, even during a hiatus when I feared the book might

not, after all, be signed. What kept me going in my determination

to write it was the friendship and stalwart support of two key people

– Sue Woolmans and Ruth Abrahams – who believed in the book

as passionately as I did and wanted to see me write it. My first and

primary debt of gratitude therefore goes to them, not just for unstintingly sharing material, looking out for new information, sharing

books, sending mountains of photocopies, photographs and emails

full of nuggets of information, but also for never letting me think

I could not do it.

During the research process many other people gave absolutely

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invaluable help: first and foremost Rudy de Casseres in Finland,

who helped winkle out the most obscure references in rare and

difficult-to-obtain Russian sources with great cheerfulness and

persistence and who was a rigorous fact-checker in the final stages.

Various people helped me with translations: Hannah Veale from

German, Karen Roth from Danish, Trond Norén Isaksen from

Swedish. Priscilla Sheringham kindly checked my French transla-

tions, and David Holohan and Natalya Kolosova my Russian. I

emailed endless questions to many friends, historians and writers

who all generously responded, sharing their thoughts and further

information: Janet Ashton, Paul Gilbert of the Royal Russia web

site, Coryne Hall, Griff Henniger, Michael Holman, Greg King,

Ilana Miller, Geoffrey Munn at Wartski’s, Neil Studge Rees, Ian

Shapiro, Richard Thornton, Frances Welch, Marion Wynn and

Charlotte Zeepvat. Special thanks must go to Will Lee for sharing

his considerable research on Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and

translations of some of Dmitri’s unpublished letters; to John Wimbles for passing on to me transcriptions of some of the wonderful letters

of the Duchess of Coburg – the product of his many years of dili-

gent work in the Romanian Archives; to Sarah Miller for sharing

hard work to find sources and for much discussion of OTMA by

email; to Mark Andersen at the Chicago Public Library for helping

track down old US magazine articles; to Phil Tomaselli for checking

the National Archives at Kew for any further light on the aborted

British asylum offer of 1917, and for advice on British involvement

in the murder of Rasputin in 1916.

Many of the illustrations in this book were generously shared

with me by two dedicated private collectors, Ruth Abrahams and

Roger Short. without their wonderful generosity I would not have

been able to afford the range of illustrations that this book enjoys.

I am also profoundly grateful to two other private individuals for

making available to me their precious family archives: John Storojev

for material on his grandfather Father Ivan Storozhev, and Victor

Buchli for granting me special access to the Katia Zborovskaia

Letters held at the Hoover Institution in California, as well as sharing much other valuable information and photographic material with

me.

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In 2011 I had the pleasure of a wonderful research trip to St

Petersburg with Sue Woolmans, Karen Roth and Maggie Field, who

shared in my enjoyment of all the wonderful places connected with

the Romanov story and endured with good humour my frequent

need to divert for cups of coffee. I am grateful to the GB–Russia

Society for generously providing me with a grant towards the cost

of this trip, and special thanks to Dr David Holohan, their talks

organizer, for arranging it. In St Petersburg we were very well looked after by Pavel Bovichev, Vasili Khokhlov and his brother Evgeniy

who answered endless questions and drove us around well beyond

the call of duty, always with a smile. Pavel has continued to track

down books for me in Russia and take reference photographs of

locations in St Petersburg.

I am, as ever, indebted to Pamela Clark, Registrar of the Royal

Archives at Windsor, who with kindness and efficiency provided me

with family letters as well as material relating to the Romanov visits to Balmoral and Cowes and I am grateful for the permission of Her

Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to quote from them. Nottingham

Archives allowed access to Meriel Buchanan’s papers and the Imperial

War Museum to those of Dorothy Seymour; the British Library for

Alexandra’s letters to Bishop Boyd Carpenter; the Bodleian Library

Special Collections for the Sydney Gibbes Papers. My thanks also

must go to Tessa Dunlop for alerting me to material in the Romanian

State Archives; to Stanley Rabinowitz at the Amherst Center for

Russian Culture for access to the Roman Gul’ Archive; to Richard

Davies at the Leeds Russian Archive for two happy days making a

speculative search of much wonderful material held there; to Tanya

Chebotarev for sending scans of the Mariia Vasil’evna Fedchenko

Papers and the Mariia Aleksandrovna Vasil’chikova Memoirs from

the Columbia University Archives; and most particularly to Carol

Leadenham and Nicholas Siekierski at the Hoover Institution for

helping me obtain access to the Katia Zborovskaia Papers. My

wonderful researcher at Hoover, Ron Basich, did a most efficient

job in checking and scanning a considerable amount of material on

my behalf.

The text of
Four Sisters
was read and commented upon at my

request by Sue Woolmans, Ruth Abrahams, Rudy de Casseres and

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Chris Warwick: I am eternally grateful for their insightful comments, suggestions and corrections. Fellow writers and friends Christina

Zaba and Fiona Mountain also read key sections and gave their

views, and have offered their valuable positive support throughout

the writing process.

I am deeply grateful to Charlie Viney for originally representing

this book and his support in the research and writing process and

to my agent Caroline Michel for her passion and commitment to

the book’s continuing journey through the production process to

publication and beyond. My publishers have been totally supportive

and enthusiastic and a joy to work with: I am most grateful to

Georgina Morley at Pan Macmillan in the UK for her guidance,

scrupulous editing and energy, this being our first book together

and I hope the first of many more. My thanks also to Jenny Overton

for her meticulous copy-editing. Charlie Spicer at St Martin’s Press

in the USA has for several years now given his solid support for my

work and I greatly value his continuing friendship. My family as

always has proudly supported my work; my brother Peter continues

to maintain my web site and keep it up to date, for which my eternal

thanks.

Living with the four Romanov sisters has been a particularly

intense, emotional experience but also a very gratifying one. They

– and Russia, for which I have an enduring love – have inspired me

as a writer and I sincerely hope that I have done them, and their

all too short lives, justice. I would welcome any new information,

photographs or insightful comments on them that readers might

care to share with me, either via my web site www.helenrappaport.

com/ or via my agent at www.petersfraserdunlop.com/.

Helen Rappaport,

West Dorset, September, 2013

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Notes

Prologue –
The Room of the First and Last Door

1 The cat Zubrovka was given to Alexey at Stavka – Army HQ – in

1916 by General Voiekov, one of the tsar’s aides. See Bokhanov,

Aleksandra Feodorovna
, p. 286. There is, however, some confusion about its ownership. In her letters to Katya Zborovskaya, Anastasia

refers to the cat as being Olga’s; see e.g. letter 8–9 June: ‘Olga’s cat has two kittens pretty enough to eat; one of them is red and the other is gray’; letter to Katya, 26 June: ‘Olga’s cat Zubrovka (the one from Mogilev, remember) . . . well she has two small kittens’. EEZ.

2 Natalya Soloveva, ‘La Tristesse Impériale’, p. 12.

3 See Long,
Russian Revolution Aspects
,
p. 6; Kuchumov,
Recollections
, p. 19.

4 Guide to Tsarskoe Selo, 1934, @: http://www.alexanderpalace.org/

palace/detskoye.html

5 See Zeepvat,
Romanov Autumn
, pp. 320–4.

6 Kelly,
Mirror to Russia
, p. 176.

7 Holmes,
Traveler’s Russia
,
p. 238; Griffith,
Seeing Soviet Russia
, p. 67.

8 Kelly,
Mirror to Russia
, p. 178; see chapter 10.

9 Delafield,
Straw without Bricks
, p. 105; Kelly,
Mirror to Russia
, p. 178.

10 Bartlett,
Riddle of Russia
, p. 241.

11 Cerutti,
Ambassador’s Wife
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1952), p. 99.

12 Bartlett,
Riddle of Russia
, p. 249.

13 Ibid.; Greenwall,
Mirrors of Moscow
, p. 182.

14 Marie Pavlovna,
Things I Remember
, p. 34.

15 Bartlett,
Riddle of Russia
, p. 248.

16 See Yakovlev,
Aleksandrovsky dvorets
, pp. 388–9, 393–5.

17 Greenwall,
Mirrors of Moscow
, p. 182.

18 Hapgood, ‘Russia’s Czarina’, p. 108.

19 Kuchumov,
Recollections
, pp. 20–2; Massie,
Pavlovsk: The Life of a
Russian Palace
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), p. 178.

20 Bartlett,
Riddle of Russia
, p. 249.

21 Chebotareva, diary for 6 August,
SA
, pp. 587–8.

22
Saturday Review
159, 27 April 1935, p. 529.

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NOTES

Chapter 1 –
Mother Love

1 Seawell, ‘The Annual Visit of the Czar and Czarina’, p. 324; see also Miller,
Four Graces
.

2
Evening Star
, 3 July 1862.

3 Karl Baedeker,
A Handbook for Travellers on the Rhine from Holland to
Switzerland
(London: K. Baedeker,
1864), p. 171.

4 Seawell, ‘Annual Visit’, p. 323.

5
Davenport Daily Leader
, 8 July 1894.

6 Helena and Sell,
Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse
, p. 14.

7 Duff,
Hessian Tapestry
, p. 91.

8 Noel,
Princess Alice
, pp. 169, 177.

9 Fulford,
Darling Child
, p. 159.

10 ‘The Czarina’,
Canadian Magazine
,
p. 302.

11 Fulford,
Beloved Mama
, pp. 23 and 24.

12
Children’s Friend
36, 1896, p. 167.

13 Ibid.

14 Helena and Sell,
Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse,
p. 270.

15 Noel,
Princess Alice
,
p. 215.

16 Helena and Sell,
Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse,
p. 304.

17 Ibid., p. 295.

18 Noel,
Princess Alice
, p. 230.

19 Letter of 13 December 1882, RA VIC/Z/87/121.

20 E.g. letter of 26 December 1891, RA VIC/MAIN/Z/90/82–3,

letter 19.

21 Letter of 15 April 1871, in Bokhanov
et al
.,
Romanovs
, p. 49.

22 G. W. Weippiert, in
Davenport Daily Leader
, 8 July 1894.