The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (47 page)

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glance in the mirror.’ It was typical of Olga to take little interest in her looks or bother about how she appeared to others. During her

hours lying at home feeling unwell the chambermaid Nyuta had

brought Olga a gramophone record – ‘Goodbye Lou-Lou’. ‘Echoes,

no doubt, of things seen in the hospital’, wrote Valentina in her

diary, perhaps alluding to songs sung by Olga’s officer friends there.

‘It’s sad for the poor children to have to live in this gilded cage.’34

When she was finally able, Olga returned to the annexe, but on

a much reduced workload, mainly taking temperatures, writing

prescriptions and machining bed linen. The lion’s share of changing

the dressings every morning was now done by Tatiana, who also did

the injections and assisted Gedroits in surgery. Valentina and Tatiana had recently had to deal with a particularly unpleasant gangrenous

wound that had required an urgent amputation. While Valentina

rushed to prepare the Novocain, Tatiana, without need for instruc-

tion, had gathered together all the instruments, prepared the oper-

ating table and the linen. During the operation a good deal of

hideous pus was drained away from the wound, and for once even

Valentina had felt nauseous. ‘But Tatiana Nikolaevna wasn’t affected

by it, only twitched at the groans and moans of the patient, and

blushed scarlet.’ She returned to the hospital at nine that evening

to sterilize the instruments with Olga and went in to see the patient at ten, just before leaving. Sadly he took a turn for the worst in the night and died.35

It was this kind of traumatic situation with which Olga was no

longer able to cope, although she visited for a short while most

days, especially while Mitya was still there. And now Tatiana was

cheered by the return of Volodya Kiknadze who had been wounded

again. The cosy foursomes they had enjoyed earlier in the summer

were once more resumed as the girls spun out the evenings sterilizing instruments and preparing swabs. ‘Who’s to know the drama Olga

Nikolaevna has been living through’, wrote Valentina. ‘Why is she

wasting away, become so thin, so pale: is she in love with Shakh-

Bagov?’ Valentina was concerned at the amount of time the sisters

were spending with their two favourites: ‘As soon as she finishes the dressings, Tatiana Nikolaevna goes to do the injections, and then

she sits down in a twosome with K[iknadze] . . . he sits down at the

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piano, playing something with one finger, and chats animatedly with

our dear girl for a long time.’ Bibi worried too; what if Elizaveta

Naryshkina were to walk in on ‘this little scene’? She would die of

shock.

Shakh Bagov has a fever and is in bed. Olga Nikolaevna spends

the whole time sitting by his bed. The other pair joined them

there yesterday and sat side by side on the bed looking through

the album. K[iknadze] cosies up to her. Tatiana Nikolaevna’s

sweet childlike face can’t hide a thing and is flushed and animated.

But isn’t all this close proximity, all this touching dangerous?

I’ve become anxious about it. The others are getting jealous, and

annoyed and I imagine they gossip and spread it around in town,

and maybe even beyond.36

Dr Gedroits shared Valentina’s concern; they both felt that

Volodya Kiknadze was a ladykiller and was leading the impression-

able Tatiana astray. Gedroits decided to send him away to the Crimea

for recuperation, or rather – as she and Valentina both saw it – ‘out of harm’s way’. Even Mitya, Olga’s ‘precious one’, was not beyond

reproach; Gedroits had discovered that once, when drunk, he had

shown private letters Olga had written to him to another patient.

‘That is positively the last straw! The poor children!’37

*

Over at Stavka on 3 December 1915 Nicholas noted in his diary

that ‘Alexey started developing a cold yesterday’; he began sneezing

and a nosebleed ensued.38 Unable to stem the bleeding, Dr Fedorov

advised that Alexey be taken back to Tsarskoe Selo. When they

arrived on the 6th Anna Vyrubova was shocked at

the waxen, grave-like pallor of the little pointed face as the boy

with infinite care was borne into the palace and laid on his little

white bed. Above the blood-soaked bandages his large blue eyes

gazed at us with pathos unspeakable, and it seemed to all around

the bed that the last hour of the unhappy child was at hand.

Grigory had, of course, been sent for and arrived soon after.

Much as before, he stood for a while by Alexey’s bed and made the

sign of the cross over him. Then he turned to Alexandra and said,

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‘Don’t be alarmed. Nothing will happen’; then he left.39 She never-

theless sat up with her son all night and did not go to bed until 8

a.m. the following morning; ‘half an hour later she got up and went

to church’, Tatiana told Valentina.40 The following day a specialist

named Dr Polyakov was called in and managed to cauterize the

bleeding. Alexey remained in bed until 18 December but was still

very frail. A disconsolate Nicholas had returned to Stavka alone on

the 12th.

As Christmas 1915 approached Olga and Tatiana were feeling

gloomy: Mitya and Volodya were soon to be discharged from the

hospital. The girls begged their mother to intercede so they could

at least stay for the holiday. On the 26th the girls ‘arranged to come just for an hour to do the dressings’ at the annexe, although not

without ‘secret thoughts’ of chatting with Mitya and Volodya, as

Valentina well knew. She was anxious to see the back of Kiknadze

whom she heard had been bragging of his conquest. ‘People are

gossiping, they see how he is constantly taking her to one side in

the ward, away from the others . . . always whispering things quietly, secretively in a low voice.’ Dr Gedroits was ‘in a rage’ about his

inappropriate behaviour.41

On 30 December 1915 Olga noted wistfully in her diary that

‘Mitya was at the commission, then came back and we sat nearly

the whole time together, playing at draughts and it was so simple.

He is good, God knows.’ In the evening she spoke to him on the

phone and heard the news she had dreaded: ‘He has suddenly

received orders from his regiment to go to the Caucasus in two

days’ time.’42

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N

By the spring of 1916 the refugee crisis in the Russian Empire had

become enormous, with something like 3.3 million people, many of

them Jews displaced from the Pale of Settlement, by fighting on

the Eastern Front.1 With the urgent need for more refuges, orphan-

ages and soup kitchens, Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna published

a heartfelt appeal in aid of her committee in the Russian press. ‘The war has ruined and scattered millions of our peaceful citizens’, she

wrote:

Homeless and breadless, the unfortunate refugees are seeking

shelter throughout the land . . . I appeal to you, all you kind-

hearted people, to help the refugee physically and morally. At

the very least give him the comfort of knowing that you under-

stand and feel for him in his boundless misery. Remember the

words of our Lord: ‘I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat; I

was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took

me in.’ [Matthew, xxv: 35]2

The Tatiana Committee not only sought to provide for refugees

but also to register them and reunite families separated by the

fighting. In particular it worked to ensure the welfare of children

– many arriving from the war zone in a pitiful state, weak from

hunger and lice-ridden – by setting up orphanages and schools for

them. Early in 1916 a seventh home for refugee children and their

mothers was opened in Petrograd under the auspices of the

committee. It was funded by Americans in the city, led by the ambas-

sador’s wife, Mrs George Marye; later that year the Americans

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donated fifteen field ambulances.3 The British also collaborated,

sending out a team of female nurses and doctors to staff the British

Women’s Maternity Hospital in Petrograd which the Tatiana

Committee was supporting to the tune of 1,000 roubles a month.4

After more than a year of war, word had spread into the foreign

press of the exemplary work of the empress and her two eldest

daughters. Olga and Tatiana were projected as virtuous heroines,

‘The Beautiful “White Sisters” of the War’, heading an army of

‘ministering women carrying the snow-white sign of peace and the

red cross of redemption’.5 British journalist John Foster Fraser

recalled how a ‘3-day Flag Day for collection for the refugees was

begun with a big service in front of Kazan Cathedral’:

The idea of helping the distant war-sufferers came from the

Grand Duchess Tatiana, aged seventeen . . . She is tall and dark

and beautiful and mischievous, and the Russians adore her . . .

When she started her fund to find bread and clothing for the

people of Poland it was like the waving of a fairy wand . . . The

appeal by their pretty princess was irresistible . . . It would have

been difficult to find a shop window in Petrograd where there

was not a large photograph of the young lady, with a softly

twinkling side-glance as much as to inquire: ‘well, how much

have you given?’6

Alexandra was delighted to tell Nicholas on 13 January that

Tatiana’s name day ‘was celebrated in town with great fanfare. There

was a concert and presentations in the theatre . . . Tatiana’s portrait with autograph was sold along with the programme.’7 Money raised

from the sale of postcards and portraits of Tatiana was going into

the fund for her committee. ‘I’ve seen elderly gentlemen sauntering

along the Nevski with as long a row of little photographs of the

princess across their rotund chests as the stretch of medals worn by

a Petrograd policeman,’ reported John Foster Fraser, ‘and that is

wonderful.’8 For others, however, the imperial family was ‘surrounded by wall after wall of isolation from the people’, wrote American

Richard Washburn Child, ‘the Czarina and the four daughters, Olga,

Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia, take some interest in charities, but

otherwise are real to the Russian people only through their photo-

graphs’.9

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Tatiana’s public profile nevertheless had been considerably raised

by the crucial work of her committee, in comparison to Olga’s less

visible role on the Supreme Council, although this undoubtedly had

much to do with Olga’s continuing ill health. Their mother too had

been absent from meetings in Petrograd as well as the annexe hospital since before Christmas. She spent most of January and February

suffering from a recurrence of excruciating neuralgia and toothache,

as well as problems with her ‘enlarged’ heart, which left her

‘constantly in tears’ from the pain.10 Dr Botkin gave her electro-

therapy treatment for the neuralgia and her dentist visited numerous

times, while Alexandra continued to dose herself on a wide range

of proprietary medicines, including opium and ‘Adonis and other

drops to quieten the heartbeating’.11 Anastasia had bronchitis and

Alexey was also unwell, with pain in his arms from going out sledging.

‘Both arms are bandaged & the right ached rather yesterday’,

Alexandra told Nicholas. Grigory had, since Anna’s accident the

previous year, been constantly on hand to pray and offer sage advice

and told her Alexey’s pain would ‘pass in two days’.12 Rasputin’s

increased influence over the empress in her husband’s absence, and

his now constant whisperings on matters military and political in

Alexandra’s ear, had been fanning the flames of gossip even more

of late. ‘The hatred grows not by the day but by the hour,’ recorded

an anxious Valentina Chebotareva, ‘and transmits itself to our poor

unfortunate girls. People think them of the same mind as their

mother.’13

For Tatiana and Olga, life continued on its narrow, repetitive

course. The foreign press might be reminding their readers that

behind the wartime nurse’s wimple, they were still considered ‘the

most beautiful children of royalty in Europe’ as it speculated yet

again on marital alliances with the Balkan states, but for Olga

thoughts of love were still very firmly rooted in her own backyard.14

Mitya Shakh-Bagov had recovered and was to leave the hospital in

early January and she was taking the prospect of his second depar-

ture very hard. ‘Olga has a tragic look once more’, Valentina was

sad to record. Part of it, she felt, was in response to the gossip about her mother and Rasputin. There was about her such ‘terrible