The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (72 page)

Read The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) Online

Authors: Helen Rappaport

Tags: #History, #Europe, #Russia & the Former Soviet Union, #Biography & Autobiography, #Women's Studies, #Family & Relationships, #Royalty, #1910s, #Civil War, #WWI

40 Eagar,
Six Years
, p. 52.

41 Ibid., pp. 70–1.

42 ‘The Czarina of Russia’,
Otago Witness
, 4 January 1900. Eagar,

‘Russian Court in Summer’, Ladies’ Column,
The Star
, 30

September 1905, reprinted from
Woman at Home
.

43 Vyrubova,
Memories
,
p. 3; Bariatinsky,
My Russian Life
, pp. 66, 87.

44 Buxhoeveden,
Life of Alexandra
, pp. 78–9; Almedingen,
Empress
Alexandra
, pp. 70–1.

45 Mee, ‘Empress of a Hundred Millions’, p. 6.

46 Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, pp. 15–16.

47
Daily News
, 15 December 1900;
Sunday Gazette
, 11 December 1898.

48 Zimin,
Detskiy mir
,
pp. 17–18; W. F. Ryan,
The Bathhouse at
Midnight: Magic in Russia
(Stroud, Glos: Sutton, 1999), p. 112; Boris Yeltsin,
Against the Grain
(London: Simon & Schuster, 1990), pp. 79–80.

49
SL
,
pp. 138–9.

50 See e.g.
Standard
,
30 November 1900.

51 Considerable rumour had been in circulation since 1897 that the

after-effects of a head wound, inflicted on Nicholas by an attacker

during a tour to Japan in 1891, had led to pressure on his brain

caused by coagulated blood gathering at the site of the injury. It

was further reported that he had had his skull trepanned by a

German surgeon, Dr Bergman, to relieve it during his 1899 visit

to Darmstadt; this claim was refuted but the rumours persisted.

See
Middlesborough Daily Gazette
, 18 January 1897;
Dundee Courier
, 27 January 1897;
Westminster Budget
, 29 January 1897;
Daily News
, 24 November and 15 December 1900.

52 ‘The Truth about the Czar’,
Daily News
, 15 December 1900.

53
DN I
, p. 564.

54 See Harris, ‘Succession Prospects’, pp. 65–6.

55 Harcave,
Memoirs of Count Witte
, p. 194; Crawford,
Michael and
Natasha
, pp. 25–6.

56 Harcave,
Memoirs of Count Witte
, p. 297; Bogdanovich,
Tri poslednykh samoderzhtsa
, p. 269.

57 ‘The Truth about the Czar’,
Daily News
, 15 December 1900. In 1917 Ernest Rumley Dawson openly cited the tsaritsa’s case history

in his
The Causation of Sex in Man
(London: H. K. Lewis, 1917), p. 218, in which he argued that ‘to secure a different sex child to

the child last born, we must first find the ovulation month of the

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NOTES

last child – i.e. the month during which the ovum shed was ferti-

lised’, and from there ‘find the months which correspond in sex to

the one which provided the last ovum’. Dawson’s simple conclu-

sion was that ‘during these months, therefore, no intercourse must

take place’. He went on to claim that his method had worked for

several of his clients in the nobility and aristocracy and then took

a look at the case of the tsaritsa, claiming that she had had four

daughters consecutively, and at last a son, ‘because on four occa-

sions a female ovulation was unfortunately fertilised’. ‘The long-

wished-for heir, the Cesarewitch, was born in August 1904.

Tracing back, we find that the ovulation month must have been

November 1903. If, therefore, September 1900 was a female

ovulation period, and produced the Princess Anastasia, we know

that September 1901 would be a male, September 1902 a female,

and September 1903 a male ovulation period; therefore October

1903 would be a female ovulation, and November 1903 was a male

ovulation, which being fertilised, the long-looked-for son and heir

was duly born in August 1904, his birth being by this plan

correctly foretold by me.’ There is no evidence to show whether

or not Nicholas and Alexandra did indeed consult directly with

Dawson or follow his theories in attempting to conceive a son.

Professor Schenk had died in 1902.

58 ‘Four Little Maids’,
Delphos Daily Herald
,
16 July 1901.

59 Ibid.

60
SL
, p. 139.

61
DN I
, p. 577.

62
LP
,
p. 204; in von Spreti,
Alix an Gretchen
, p. 117, the illness is described as typhus.

63 Letter to Toni Becker, 19 May 1901, in Kuhnt,
Briefe der Zarin
, p.

123; Eagar,
Six Years
, pp. 131–2.

64 Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, p. 16.

65
DN I
, p. 599.

66 Eagar,
Six Years
,
p. 132.

67 Anon. [Casper],
Intimacies of Court and Society
, p. 137.

68
LP
, p. 206.

69
Daily Mail
, 19 June 1901.

70 Paléologue,
Alexandra-Féodorowna
, p. 16.

71 Anon. [Casper],
Intimacies of Court and Society
, p. 137.

72 Paoli,
My Royal Clients
, p. 124.

73 Cassini,
Never a Dull Moment
, p. 150.

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NOTES

74 Holmes,
Travelogues
, p. 50.

75 Philippe stayed at Znamenka 9–21 July. See
DN I
, pp. 605–7.

Chapter 4
: The Hope of Russia

1 Mintslov
, Peterburg
, pp. 37–8; Hapgood,
Russian Rambles
, p. 50.

2 Durland,
Royal Romances
, p. 135.

3 The spelling and the ordering of Philippe’s names vary widely but

Nizier Anthelme Philippe is the name recorded on his tombstone. See

Robert D. Warth, ‘Before Rasputin: Piety and the Occult at the Court

of NII’,
Historian
XLVII, May 1985, pp. 323–6 (p. 327, n. 16). Warth is the most reliable source for Philippe; see also Spiridovich,
Les
Dernières années
, vol. 1 , pp. 80–4.

4 Paléologue,
Ambassador’s Memoirs
, pp. 185–6.

5 Hall,
Little Mother of Russia
, pp. 190 –1.

6 Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, p. 19.

7
DN I
,
p. 588.

8 See
LP
,
p. 219; Shemansky and Geichenko,
Poslednye Romanovy v
Petergof
,
p. 90.

9 See Nicholas’s diary for July,
DN I
, pp. 605–6 and also pp. 629, 642.

10 Paléologue
, Ambassador’s Diary
,
p. 188; see also Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, pp. 25–6.

11 Shemansky and Geichenko,
Poslednye Romanovy v Petergof
,
p. 52.

12
LP
, p. 214.

13
DN I
, p. 654.

14 Naryshkin-Kurakin,
Under Three Tsars
, p. 171.

15
Pravitelstvennyi vestnik
, no. 183, 21 August 1902.

16 The condition Alexandra had been suffering from is nowadays

called a molar pregnancy. Hydatidiform moles form in the uterus

when a non-viable egg – usually one where two sperm have

entered at the moment of fertilization – implants itself in the

lining of the womb and begins to grow. Instead of multiplying in

the normal way, the cells mutate, and in some cases can become

cancerous, and the placenta develops into a cyst. In Alexandra’s

case, her body had ultimately rejected this mass of cells growing in

the lining of her womb, but the condition would have raised her

hormone levels, resulting in nausea and tiredness which were

common symptoms in all her pregnancies, thus reassuring her that

the pregnancy was progressing normally. Russian historian Igor

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NOTES

Zimin rediscovered the private report in the Russian archives in

2010. See Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, pp. 22–5.

17 Ibid., pp. 21–2.

18 ‘The Tsar: A Character Sketch’,
Fortnightly Review
75, no. 467, 1

March 1904, p. 364.

19
Anglo-Russian
VI,
no. 5, November 1902, p. 653.

20 Ibid., p. 654.

21 Moe,
Prelude
, p. 104, n. 114.

22 Zimin,
Detskiy mir
,
p. 27; Fuhrmann,
Rasputin
, p. 36.

23
Post-Standard
, Syracuse, 21 September 1902;
Boston Sunday Globe
,

16 November 1902;
Post-Standard
,
Syracuse, 17 November 1902
.

24
Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraph,
as quoted in the
Kalona News
,
Iowa, 8 November 1901.

25 Anon. [Casper],
Intimacies of Court and Society
, p. 133.

26
The Times
, 11 July 1903.

27 Naryshkin-Kurakin,
Under Three Tsars
, p. 175.

28 See Paléologue,
Ambassador’s Memoirs
, pp. 190–1;
DN I,
pp. 740–1.

For a fuller description of the visit to Sarov, see Rounding,
Alix
and Nicky
, pp. 44–7; Moe,
Prelude
,
pp. 54–7. For the fate of Seraphim’s remains, which were vandalized under the Soviets, see

John and Carol Garrard,
Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and

Power in the New Russia
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 2008), ch. 2.

29 Eagar,
Six Years
,
pp. 159–60.

30
DN I
, p. 764; Eagar,
Six Years
, pp. 164–5.

31 Durland,
Royal Romances
, pp. 165–6;
Daily Mirror
, 29 December 1903; Eagar,
Six Years,
p. 169.

32
DN I
, p. 765.

33 Eagar, ‘Christmas at the Court of the Tsar’, p. 30.

34 Ibid.

35
LP
, p. 240.

36 Durland,
Royal Romances
, pp. 185–6; Eagar,
Six Years
, p. 172.

37 Eagar, ‘Further Glimpses’, p. 366; Eagar,
Six Years
, p. 177.

38 Quoted in the
Brisbane Courier
, 1 October 1904.

39 Letter to Boyd Carpenter, 29 December 1902 (OS), BL Add.

46721 f. 238; Bokhanov,
Aleksandra Feodorovna
, p. 147, quoting the American author George Miller.

40 Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 68.

41 See Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, pp. 28–9.

42 ‘New Czarevitch’,
Daily Express
, 13 August 1904.

43 Buxhoeveden,
Before the Storm
, pp. 237–8.

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NOTES

44
DN I
, p. 817;
LP
, p. 244.

45 Zimin,
Tsarskie dengi
, p. 28.

46
Unitarian Register
83, 1904, p. 901.

47 For fuller details, see ‘The Cesarevitch’,
The Times
, 25 August 1904.

48
LP
, p. 244.

49 Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm, ‘The Russian Imperial Award System

during the Reign of Nicholas II 1894–1917’,
Journal of the Finnish
Antiquarian Society
113, 2005, p. 358.

50 Fedchenko Papers, ‘Vospominaniya o Marii Fedorovne Geringer’,

ff. 27–8.

51 Buxhoeveden,
Before the Storm,
pp. 240–1. It is unclear whether all four sisters attended the actual ceremony as reports vary considerably. Olga and Tatiana were certainly in the procession going to

the church but
The Times
reported that the four girls did not attend the actual ceremony but watched ‘from an alcove’ – see
The
Times
, 25 August 1904.

52 Ioann Konstantinovich, letter from Livadia to his family, 9–17

September 1904, in
Rossiiskii Arkhiv
XV, 2007, p. 426.

53 Eagar,
Six Years
, p. 223; Buxhoeveden,
Before the Storm
, p. 241.

54 Durland,
Royal Romances
, p. 135; Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 106.

55 ‘Passing Events’,
Broad Views
, 12 September 1904, p. 266.

56 Howe,
George von Lengerke Meyer,
p. 100.

57 ‘Passing Events’,
Broad Views
,
12 September 1904, p. 266.

58 Thomas Bentley Mott,
Twenty Years as a Military Attaché
(London: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 131.

59 Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, p. 31.

60
LP
, p. 245.

61 Roman Romanoff,
Det var et rigt hus . . . Erindringer af Roman
Romanoff prins af rusland, 1896–1919
,Copenhagen: Gyldendal,

1991, pp. 58–9. I am grateful to Karen Roth for this translation