The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (74 page)

24 For an excellent summary, see Nelipa,
Murder of Rasputin
, pp.

26–9.

25 Sablin, ‘S tsarskoy sem’ei na “Shtandarte”’, f. 9.

26 Ibid., f. 10.

27 Ibid.

28 Welch,
Romanovs and Mr Gibbes
, p. 43; Bowra,
Memories
, p. 65.

29 According to Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 121, Alexandra sent two telegrams to Rasputin in Pokrovskoe and he assured her

that ‘her little son would never die of his illness’.

30
SL
, p. 231; Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, p. 35; Massie,
Nicholas and
Alexandra
, p. 143.

31 Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 122.

32 Marie of Romania,
Story of My Life
, pp. 474–5.

33 Ular,
Russia from Within
, p. 41; Radziwill,
Taint
, p. 208.

34 Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, p. 36.

35 Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 122.

36
LP,
pp. 315–16. The girls’ English spelling in all these letters is
sic
.

37
LP
, p. 320.

38 Bonetskaya,
Tsarskie deti
, p. 400.

39
LP
, p. 318.

40 Ibid., p. 319.

41 Bonetskaya,
Tsarskie deti
, pp. 407–8.

42 Ibid., p. 409.

403

693GG_TXT.indd 403

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NOTES

43 Ibid.

44
LP
, p. 321; Bokhanov,
Aleksandra Feodorovna
, p. 195.

45
LP
, p. 321.

46 Bokhanov,
Aleksandra Feodorovna
, p. 195.

47 Vorres,
Last Grand Duchess
, p. 141.

48 Prime Minister Stolypin had also commissioned a private investi-

gation of Rasputin by the Okhrana. A damning report, like that on

Philippe in 1902, it was shown to Nicholas and Alexandra but they

chose to ignore it.

49 Naryshkin-Kurakin,
Under Three Tsars
, p. 196.

50 See @: http://traditio-ru.org/wiki/Письма_царских_дочерей_

Григорию_Распутину

51 See also Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 105; Fuhrmann,
Rasputin
, pp. 94–5, quoting GARF F612, op1, d 42, 1.5.

52 See @: http://traditio-ru.org/wiki/Письма_царских_дочерей_

Григорию_Распутину /

53 It is impossible to know for certain the identity of Nikolay; he

could have been one of any number of officers in the imperial

entourage whom Olga saw in church on Sundays. Bearing in mind

the frequency with which she saw him and was photographed with

him on board the
Shtandart
, it has been suggested that Olga had developed a crush on Nikolay Sablin. But at twenty-nine, a trusted

member of her father’s entourage, and almost twice Olga’s age,

Sablin seems an unlikely candidate for such a young teenage girl.

54 Ibid. The letters came into the possession of a monk and associate of Rasputin’s named Iliodor (Sergey Trufanov), who claimed that

when Rasputin had met him at Christmas 1909 in Pokrovskoe, he

had shown Iliodor numerous letters sent to him by Alexandra and

the girls, and that Rasputin had given him seven of these letters as

a ‘souvenir’. The text of the letters appeared in a book on

Rasputin by the Russian dissident writer Andrey Almarik that was

published in French in 1982. The Russian text can be found online

@: http://www.erlib.com/Андрей_Амальрик/Распутин/9/ Some of

the letters were also published in S. P. Istratova,
Zhitie bludnogo
startsa Grishki Rasputina
(Moscow: Vozrozhdenie, 1990), pp. 1015–

16. Note that the letters appear to have been redacted at some

point and are quoted in various forms in different sources. No

single source has yet come to light that gives them in full.

404

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NOTES

Chapter 8
: Royal Cousins

1 Tyutcheva, ‘Za neskolko let’.

2 Sablin,
Desyat let’
, p. 145.

3 Zeepvat, ‘One Summer’, p. 12.

4
Anglo-Russian
XII, 11 May 1909, p. 1265.

5 Keith Neilson and Thomas Otte,
The Permanent Under-Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, 1854–1946
(Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2009), p.

133.

6 See ‘Petitions of protest against the visit to England of the Emperor of Russia’, RA PPTO/QV/ADD/PP3/39. The original letters of

protest can be seen at the National Archives at Kew.

7 ‘The Detective’,
Nebraska State Journal
, 9 October 1910; ‘Guarding the Tsar’,
Daily Mirror
, 3 August 1909.

8 Lord Suffield,
My Memories, 1830–1913
(London: Herbert Jenkins, 1913), p. 303.

9 British press accounts were many and detailed; see e.g.
Daily Mirror
, 31 July to 5 August, which published numerous photographs. For a

Russian view of the visit, see Spiridovich,
Last Years
,
pp. 312–19 and Sablin,
Desyat let’
, pp. 148–58.

10 Richard Hough,
Edward and Alexandra
, p. 236.

11 See: Sablin,
Desyat let’
, p. 151; Alastair Forsyth, ‘Sovereigns and Steam Yachts: The Tsar at Cowes’,
Country Life
,
2 August 1984, pp. 310–12; ‘Cowes Week’,
The Times
, 7 August 1909.

12 ‘The Cowes Week’,
Isle of Wight County Press
, 7 August 1909.

13 RA QM/PRIV/CC25/39: 6 August 1909.

14 When it was mooted that the Prince of Wales would attend

Nicholas’s coronation in Moscow in 1896 a Russian official was

said to have remarked, ‘We cannot very well manage to protect

two Czars!’ See ‘Alien’s Letter from England’,
Otago Witness
, 29

September 1909.

15 Anne Edwards,
Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor

(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984), p. 169.

16 Duke of Windsor,
A King’s Story
(London: Prion Books, 1998), p.

129.

17 ‘Cowes Regatta Week’,
Otago Witness
, 29 September 1909.

18 Hough,
Edward and Alexandra
:
Their Private and Public Lives,
London: Coronet, 1992, p. 381.

19 Sir Henry William Lucy,
Diary of a Journalist
, vol. 2,
1890–1914

(London: John Murray,1921), p. 285.

405

693GG_TXT.indd 405

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NOTES

20
Correspondence
,
p. 284.

21 Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, p. 381; see also Alexandra’s letter to Tatiana, 30 December 1909,
LP
,
p. 307.

22 Spirovich,
Last Years
, p. 322, though he refers to the doctor only as

‘M.X.’. See also Naryshkin-Kurakin,
Under Three Tsars
, pp. 192–3.

23 Confirmed in Mackenzie Wallace, letter to Knollys, RA W/55/53,

7 August 1909. See also Spiridovich,
Last Years
,
pp. 321–3.

24 The suggestion is made by Zimin that many people suspected a

lesbian undercurrent in Vyrubova’s behaviour towards Alexandra.

Dr Fischer had sensed this and as a result was forced out, to be

replaced by the sycophantic Botkin. See Zimin,
Detskiy mir
,
pp.

380–3 and Bogdanovich,
Tri poslednykh samoderzhtsa
, p. 483.

25 Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 123.

26
LP
, p. 320.

27 Spiridovich,
Last Years
, p. 347.

28 Ibid.

29 See Dorr,
Inside the Russian Revolution
, p. 113.

30 Spiridovich
, Last Years
, p. 347.

31 Almarik, @: http://www.erlib.com/Андрей_Амальрик/Распутин/9/

32 Gregor Alexinski,
Modern Russia
(London: Fisher Unwin, 1915), p.

90.

33 Spiridovich,
Last Years
, p. 409.

34 Wheeler and Rives,
Dome
,
p. 347. The now forgotten account of Post Wheeler and his wife Hallie Rives is exceptionally vivid for

the years 1906–11 in St Petersburg.

35 Ibid., pp. 342–3.

36 Fraser,
Red Russia
, pp. 18, 19.

37 Ibid., p. 20.

38 Wheeler and Rives,
Dome
, p. 411.

39 Ular,
Russia from Within
, pp. 71, 83. For a fascinating contemporary account of the Grand Dukes see pp. 71–100.

40 Wheeler and Rives,
Dome
, p. 347.

41 Considered highly erotic if not immoral,
Three Weeks
, published in 1907, was banned in many places. Some said it was loosely based

on the Empress Alexandra but Glyn had certainly not had her in

mind when writing it. See Joan Hardwick,
Addicted to Romance
:
Life
and Adventures of Elinor Glyn
, London: André Deutsch, 1994, p.

155. The book sold 5 million copies and prompted the popular

rhyme: ‘Would you like to sin / With Elinor Glyn / On a tiger

skin? / Or would you prefer / To err with her / On some other

fur?’

406

693GG_TXT.indd 406

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NOTES

42 Glyn,
Elinor Glyn
,
p. 178.

43 Glyn,
Romantic Adventure
, p. 180.

44 Ibid., pp. 183, 182.

45 Ibid., p. 182.

46 Ibid., p. 184.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., p. 204.

49 Ibid., pp. 194, 204–5. Tragically, Glyn’s original, and no doubt

fascinating, diary of her time in Russia was destroyed in a house

fire in 1956.

50 Glyn’s novel
His Hour
,
based on her Russian trip and published in October 1911,
which she dedicated to Grand Duchess Vladimir, also reflected her own strong sense of impending disaster in

Russia.

51 Ibid., p. 347.

52 Ibid., p. 354.

53 Ibid.

54 ‘A Former Lady in Waiting Tells of a Visit to Tsarskoe-Selo’,

Washington Post
, 2 May 1909.

55 Wheeler and Rives,
Dome
, pp. 355–6.

56 ‘A Visit to the Czar’,
Cornhill Magazine
33, 1912, p. 747.

57 Minzlov, ‘Home Life of the Romanoffs’, p. 164; Ryabinin,

‘Tsarskaya Semya v Krymu osen 1913 goda’, p. 83.

58
LP
, p. 330, letters of 7 and 11 March.

59
LP
, p. 334, 17 May 1910.

60 Quoted in Titov, ‘OTMA’, p. 44. Anastasia destroyed all her

diaries in 1917 but some notebooks survive in GARF, from which

this quotation would appear to be taken.

61 Bogdanovich,
Tri poslednykh samoderzhtsa
, pp. 506–7.

62 See Sablin,
Desyat let’
, pp. 215–16.

63 Vyrubova,
Memories
, p. 63.

64
LP
p. 330; Bokhanov,
Aleksandra Feodorovna
, pp. 217–18.

65
LP
, p. 331; Naryshkin,
Under Three Tsars
, p. 196.

66
LP
, pp. 342–3.

67 Ktorova,
Minuvshee
, p. 88; Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 102.

68 See Ktorova,
Minuvshee
, p. 87.

69 Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 125.

407

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NOTES

Chapter 9
: In St Petersburg We Work; but at Livadia We Live

1
SL
, p. 254; Vyrubova,
Memories
, p. 50.

2 King, ‘Requiem’, p. 106.

3 Hunt,
Flurried Years
, p. 133.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., pp. 133–4.

6 Baroness W. Knell, in
Gleaner
, 6 December 1910.

7 Hough,
Mountbatten
, pp. 22–3.

8 John Terraine,
Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten
(London: Arrow Books, 1980), p. 25.

9 Poore,
Memoirs of Emily Loch
,
p. 305. For Emily Loch’s account of this visit see pp. 302–11. In February 1912 Alexandra allowed pocket

money of 5 roubles a month to be paid to the younger two girls.

Zimin,
Detskiy mir.

10 Marie, Furstin zu Erbach-Schönberg,
Reminiscences
(London: Allen

& Unwin, 1925), p. 358.

11 Ibid., p. 359.

12 Maria Vasil’chikova, Memoir, f. 14. See also Madeleine Zanotti,

quoted in Radziwill,
Nicholas II
, p. 195. For the Nauheim visit see King, ‘Requiem’.

13 Hough,
Mountbatten
,
p. 23.

14 Hough,
Louis and Victoria
, p. 262, letter, 29 December 1911.

15
LP
, p. 335.

16 Ibid., pp. 335–6.

17 Buxhoeveden,
Before the Storm
, p. 288.

18 ‘Tragedy of a Throne: Czarina Slowly Dying of Terror’,
Straits
Times
, 6 January 1910.

19
Daily Express
,
XXXX 1910.

20 Wheeler and Rives
, Dome
, p. 405.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., p. 406.

24 Hall,
Little Mother
, p. 234.

25 Wheeler and Rives,
Dome, p. 407.

26
Correspondence
, 19 April, p. 290.

27 Korshunova
et al.
,
Pisma . . . Elizaveta Feodorovny
, p. 258.

28
LP
, p. 342.

29 See letter of Prince Ioann Konstantinovich, 7 March 1903,

Rossiiskiy arkhiv
XV, p. 392.

408

693GG_TXT.indd 408

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NOTES

30 Sablin,
Desyat’ let
, p. 241.

31 19 August 1911 entry, Meriel Buchanan diary, BuB 6, MB Archive,

Nottingham University. See also
Correspondence
, Alexandra’s letter to Onor, 13 August, p. 350.