The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (9 page)

– two of the most closely guarded monarchs in the world. In the

run-up to the visit, the queen’s private secretary Sir Arthur Bigge

had consulted closely with Lieutenant-General Charles Fraser,

superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, who submitted a special

report outlining the provision of detectives in addition to Nicholas’s own three Okhrana men. Ten police constables were to be on patrol

in and around Balmoral Castle throughout the visit; railway

employees would patrol the entire route of the tsar’s train and all

bridges and viaducts be supervised by local police. Assistant

Commissioner Robert Anderson admitted to Bigge that he was glad

that the tsar was ‘at Balmoral and not in London. I should be very

anxious indeed if he were
here
.’59

On 22 September (NS) Nicholas and Alexandra arrived at the

port of Leith on their yacht the
Shtandart
in the midst of a chilly Scottish downpour. ‘The sight of the Imperial baby moved every

female heart in the crowd, and there was an animated display of

pocket handkerchiefs’, reported the
Leeds Mercury
.60 Bonfires burning from hill to hill greeted every stage of the journey by train from

Leith to Ballater, where a guard of honour made up of Highland

pipers and men of the Royal Scots Greys (of whom Nicholas had

been made an honorary colonel on his marriage to Alexandra) met

the couple. But the bunting decorating the station was sadly bedrag-

gled by the heavy rain by the time they arrived. The rain, although

‘repellent’ as Nicholas recorded in his diary, did not, however,

dampen the spirits of the crowds who gathered to watch the five

carriages of the Russian entourage – one exclusively for the use of

Grand Duchess Olga and her two attendants – pass by.61 As they

approached Balmoral the bells of nearby Crathie Church rang out

and bagpipes played, as a line of estate workers and kilted Highlanders stood holding burning torches along the roadside in the rain. And

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there on the doorstep was Grandmama waiting to greet them,

surrounded by many of her extended family.

Everyone at Balmoral was charmed by the chubby and happy

ten-month-old Olga, including her admiring great-grandmother.

‘The baby is magnificent’, she told her eldest daughter Vicky in

Berlin; all in all she was ‘a lovely, lively grandchild’.62 ‘Oh, you never saw such a darling as she is,’ wrote the queen’s lady-in-waiting Lady Lytton, ‘a very broad face, very fat, in a lovely high Sir Joshua baby bonnet – but with bright intelligent eyes, a wee mouth and so happy

– contented the whole day.’ Lady Lytton thought Olga ‘quite an

old person already – bursting with life and happiness and a perfect

knowledge how to behave’.63 The British press remarked on

Alexandra’s ‘pride and joy at having a little daughter to bring with

her’ as being ‘almost pathetic to witness’.64 ‘The tiny Grand Duchess takes very kindly to her new surroundings,’ reported the
Yorkshire
Herald
, ‘and it is said that the moment she saw her great-grandmother she delighted that august lady by adopting her as her first and most

willing slave.’65 Queen Victoria was so smitten that she even went

to see Olga taking her bath, as did other members of the royal

household, all of whom admired a happy and informal Russian

empress enjoying the pleasure of her child – so totally in contrast

to her normal stiff and haughty manner.

Nicholas meanwhile was having rather a miserable time of it,

suffering from neuralgia and a swollen face – caused by the decayed

stump of a tooth (he was fearful of the dentist). He complained

during the visit that he saw even less of Alix than at home, because

his uncle Bertie insisted on dragging him out grouse- shooting and

deer-stalking all day in the cold, wind and rain. ‘I am totally exhausted from clambering up hills and standing for ages . . . inside mounds

of earth’, he wrote in his diary.66

During their stay baby Olga had been trying to take her first

steps and her two-year-old cousin David – son of the Duke of York

and the future Edward VIII – had taken a shine to her, going to

see her daily and offering an encouraging hand, so that by the time

the family left, Olga was able to toddle across the drawing room

holding his hand. Queen Victoria noted the children together with

marked interest. It was a pretty pairing; ‘La Belle Alliance’, she is
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said to have approvingly remarked to Nicholas. The imagination of

the British press quickly ran riot, with claims even of an informal

betrothal.67

On one of the finer days of their visit the first and only cine-

matograph film of Nicholas and Alexandra with Queen Victoria was

made in the courtyard at Balmoral, filmed by William Downey, the

royal photographer. Before leaving, the couple planted a tree to

commemorate their visit. Alexandra had enjoyed being back in

Scotland and was sad to go: ‘It has been such a very short stay and

I leave dear kind Grandmama with a heavy heart’, she told her old

governess Madge Jackson. ‘Who knows when we may meet again

and where?’68

*

On 3 October (NS) the imperial family took the train south to

Portsmouth where they boarded the
Polyarnaya zvezda
for a five-day state visit to France. From Cherbourg to Paris, they were greeted

by huge crowds lining the streets, and arrived in the capital to a

grand reception at the Elysée Palace hosted by President Faure.

The French were fascinated that such distinguished monarchs should

have their baby on tour with them rather than leave her behind in

the nursery. Olga was so adaptable and had such a placid tempera-

ment that she travelled well, sitting on her nurse’s lap in an open

landau. Her smiling presence, with her nurse helping her wave her

hand to the crowd and blow them kisses, endeared her to everyone.

‘Our daughter made a great impression everywhere’, Nicholas told

his mother. The first thing President Faure asked Alexandra each

day was the health of
la petite duchesse
. Everywhere they went little Olga was greeted by shouts of ‘
Vive la bébé
’; some even called her
La tsarinette
.69 A polka was specially composed ‘Pour la Grande Duchesse Olga’ and all kinds of souvenirs and commemorative china

were on sale, featuring her picture as well as that of her parents. By the end of her parents’ foreign tour, the little Russian grand duchess was one of the most discussed royal children in the world. She was

certainly the richest, with it being alleged that £1 million had been invested in her name in British, French and other securities when

she was born.70 Nicholas had certainly settled money on his daughter,
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as he would for all his children, but it would be far less than the

outlandish amounts suggested and was, effectively, money left them

in Alexander III’s will.71 Nevertheless rumours of Croesus-like riches being heaped on the child led to fanciful ideas put about in the

American press that little Olga was rocked in a mother-of-pearl

cradle, her nappies fixed with gold safety pins set with pearls.72

After a private nineteen-day visit to Ernie and his family in

Darmstadt in October, Nicholas and Alexandra returned to Russia

overland on the imperial train and promptly retreated to their quiet

life at Tsarskoe Selo, where they celebrated Olga’s first birthday in November. Alexandra was by now pregnant again and her second

pregnancy proved a difficult one. By December she was suffering

severe pain in her side and back and there were fears of a miscar-

riage.73 Ott and Günst were summoned and confined Alexandra to

bed; there was a total clampdown on news and it was early the

following year, 1897, before even members of the imperial family

were told.

After a long and wearying seven weeks of bed rest, Alexandra

was finally allowed outside in a wheelchair. She was not sorry to

have to miss the winter season in Petersburg, but in PR terms this

was a disaster. Her absence from view and the rumours of her

continuing poor health had done their work in further eroding what

little goodwill she enjoyed in Russia. Superstition and rumour began

to gain a foothold and persisted ever after, focusing on the tsaritsa’s desperate hopes for a boy. One story in circulation was that ‘four

blind nuns from Kiev’ had been brought to Tsarskoe Selo at the

suggestion of the Montenegrin princess, Militza (wife of Grand

Duke Petr Nikolaevich), who herself was a fan of faith healing and

the occult. These women, it was said, had brought with them ‘four

specially blessed candles and four flasks of water from a well in

Bethlehem’. Having lit the candles at each corner of Alexandra’s

bed and sprinkled her with the Bethlehem water, they assured her

she would have a boy.74 Another tale suggested that a deformed and

half-blind cripple called Mitya Kolyaba, who had supposed powers

of prophecy that only became apparent during violent epileptic fits,

was also brought in to work a miracle on the empress. On being

taken to see her he had said nothing, but had later prophesied the

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birth of a male child and was sent gifts by the grateful imperial

couple.75 But nothing could allay either Alexandra’s rising anxiety

or the pressure she was under, made worse when her sister Irene,

Princess Henry of Prussia, gave birth to a second boy in November

and her sister-in-law Xenia produced her second baby – a son – in

January.

Although she was up and about again, Alexandra could not face

a return to public duties, even in a wheelchair – her sciatica being

aggravated by the discomforts of the pregnancy. ‘I am beginning to

look a pretty sight already, & I dread appearing half high for the Emperor of Austria after Easter,’ she told Ernie, ‘I can only walk

half an hour, more tires me too much, & stand I can’t at all.’76 She endured the pain with characteristic fortitude, for ‘what happiness

can be greater than living for a little being one is going to give one’s treasured husband’. As for Olga, ‘Baby is growing & tries to chatter, the beautiful air gives her nice pink cheeks. She is such a bright

little Sunbeam, always merry & smiling.’77

At the end of May Nicholas and Alexandra decamped to Peterhof

to await the arrival of their second child, which came on 29 May

1897, with Ott and Günst once more in attendance. The labour was

less protracted this time, and the baby was smaller too, at 8¾ lb

(3.9 kg) although forceps were once more needed.78 But it was

another girl. They called her Tatiana. She was exceptionally pretty,

with dark curly hair and large eyes, and she was the image of her

mother.

It is said that when Alexandra came round from the chloroform

administered during delivery, and saw the looks on the ‘anxious and

troubled faces’ around her, she ‘burst into loud hysterics’. ‘My God, it is again a daughter,’ she was heard to cry. ‘What will the nation

say, what will the nation say?’79

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MY GOD! WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT!

. . . A FOURTH GIRL!

N

On 10 June 1897 (NS) Queen Victoria sent a trenchant note to her

daughter, Princess Beatrice: ‘Alicky has got a 2nd daughter which

I fully expected.’1 While the queen may have been gifted with the

art of prophecy, Nicholas accepted the arrival of a second daughter

with quiet equanimity. It was, he wrote, ‘the second bright, happy

day in our family life . . . God blessed us with a little daughter –

Tatiana’.2 His sister Xenia visited soon after: ‘I went in to see Alix, who was nursing the baby girl. She looks wonderful. The little one

is so dear, and she and her mother are like as two peas in a pod!

She has a tiny mouth, so pretty.’

But elsewhere in the Russian imperial family a sense of gloom

prevailed; ‘everyone was very disappointed as they had been hoping

for a son’, admitted Grand Duke Konstantin. From the Caucasus,

where he was taking the cure for his tuberculosis, Nicholas’s brother Georgiy telegraphed to say that he was disappointed not to have a

nephew to relieve him of his duties as tsarevich: ‘I was already

preparing to go into retirement, but it was not to be.’3

‘The joys of the Czar have been increased, but scarcely with

satisfaction’, observed one British paper in response to the news.

‘The Czarina has yesterday presented his Imperial Majesty with a

second daughter, which, to a monarch praying for a son and heir,

is not comforting. Little wonder if the Court party is shaking its

head, and the hopes of the Grand Dukes are rising.’4 While Nicholas

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showed no public signs of disappointment, a few days later the
Boston
Daily Globe
reported that the tsar was ‘taking it very hard that he had yet again been denied a male heir’, and stated – totally erroneously – that he was ‘sunk in melancholia’. Meanwhile, it was claimed