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

The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (73 page)

4 The following year Nicholas’s security forces insisted that the ceremony take place out of town, at the lake in front of the Catherine

Palace at Tsarskoe Selo.

5 Min’s assassin, Zinaida Konoplyannikova, was hanged soon afterwards at the Shlisselburg Fortress – the first female revolutionary to be

executed since Sofya Perovskaya, one of the assassins of Alexander II, in 1881. The American ambassador to St Petersburg, George von

Lengerke Meyer, made a report to US Senator Lodge summarizing

the number of attacks and assassinations carried out in Russia between 1900 and 1906: ‘killed or injured by bombs, revolvers, assaults: 1,937

officials and important persons, 1 grand duke, 67 governors, general

governors and town prefects; 985 police officers and policemen; 500

army officers and soldiers; 214 civil functionaries, 117 manufacturers, 53 clergymen.’ See Howe,
George von Lengerke Meyer
, p. 329.

6 Marie Pavlovna,
Things I Remember
, p. 76.

7 ‘Home Life of the Czar’,
London Journal
, 14 February 1903, p. 150.

8 Ibid.

9 See Spiridovich,
Last Years
, pp.12–17.

10 Mossolov,
At the Court
, p. 36.

11 See ‘Terrible Bomb Outrage’
, Advertiser
,
Adelaide, 2 October 1906.

12 ‘Children Without a Smile’,
Washington Post
, 28 May 1905.

13 Andrei Almarik,
Rasputin: dokumentalnaya povest
, ch. IX, accessible

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

14 Ibid.; Kokovtsov,
Iz moego proshlago
2, , p. 348; Wyrubova,
Muistelmia Venäjän
, p. 105.

15 Ibid. See also Wheeler and Rives,
Dome
, pp. 348–9. A monument to the victims of the attack on Stolypin’s villa was erected on the

site in 1908, and surprisingly survived the Soviet era.

16 For a more balanced view of Rasputin by a close member of the

family who witnessed him first hand, see Olga Alexandrovna’s

memoirs in Vorres,
Last Grand Duchess
, ch. 7, pp. 133–46. An

interesting and objective contemporary view that does much to

demystify him can also be found in Shelley,
Blue Steppes
, ch. V,

‘The Era of Rasputin’.

398

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NOTES

17 Spiridovich,
Last Years
, p. 109; see Nicholas’s diary entries for 1

November 1905, 18 July, 12 October, 9 December 1906, accessible

@: http://lib.ec/b/384140/read#t22

18 Gilliard,
Thirteen Years
, p. 26.

19 Poore,
Memoirs of Emily Loch
, p. 301.

20 ‘The Tsar’s Children’,
Daily Mirror
, 29 December 1903.

21 ‘The Tottering House of the Romanoffs’,
Washington Post
, 26

November 1905.

22 Marina de Heyden,
Les Rubis portent malheur
(Monte Carlo: Editions Regain, 1967), p. 27.

23 Bonetsakaya,
Tsarskie deti
, p. 332.

24 Spiridovich,
Last Years
, p. 26.

25 Girardin,
Précepteur des Romanov
, p. 45.

26 Ibid. In 1906 Stana would divorce the duke and marry her sister’s brother-in-law Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich, effecting, for a

while, an even closer rapport with Nicholas and Alexandra, until

Stana and Nikolay became alienated from the imperial couple in

the wake of Rasputin’s increasing influence.

27 For the daily routine of family life at Tsarskoe Selo, see e.g. Alexey Volkov’s
Memories
, ch. 10, accessible @: http://www.alexanderpalace.org/volkov/8.html

28
LP
, letter from Alexandra when in Pskov, 4 August 1905, p. 278.

29 29 Bokanov,
Love Power and Tragedy
, p 112.

30 ‘The Tottering House of the Romanoffs’,
Washington Post
, 26

November 1905.

31 Buxhoeveden,
Before the Storm
, p. 258.

32 ‘The Tsar’s Children’,
Daily Mirror
, 29 December 1903.

33 Ibid.

34 Wortman,
Scenarios of Power
, p. 331; Letter to Boyd Carpenter, 29

December 1902 (11 January 1903 NS), BL Add 46721 f. 238.

35
LP
, p. 256.

36 Durland,
Royal Romances
, p. 187; Eagar,
Six Years
, p. 163.

37 Eagar, ‘Christmas at the Court of the Tsar’, p. 27.

38 Eagar,
Six Years
, p. 214.

39
LP
, p. 221.

40 Eagar,
Six Years
, p. 169.

41
Daily Mirror
, 29 December 1903.

42 Durland,
Royal Romances
, p. 197.

43 Virubova,
Keisarinnan Hovineiti
, p. 230.

44 Minzlov, ‘Home Life of the Romanoffs’, p. 163; Eagar, ‘Further

Glimpses’, p. 367; Durland,
Royal Romances
, p. 188.

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NOTES

45 Eagar,
Six Years
, p. 71.

46 Minzlov, ‘Home Life of the Romanoffs’, p. 162. For perhaps the

best portrait of the much-written-about Anastasia, see her aunt

Olga’s account in Vorres,
Last Grand Duchess
, pp. 108–13. Note these very detailed and personal memories were the basis for Olga

Alexandrovna’s emphatic rejection of false claimant Anna

Anderson.

47 Minzlov, ‘Home Life of the Romanoffs’, p. 162.

48 Eagar, ‘Russian Court in Summer’, p. 390.

49 Durland,
Royal Romances
, pp. 202–3.

50 Eagar, ‘Further Glimpses’, pp. 366–7.

51 King and Wilson,
Resurrection of the Romanovs
, p. 24.

52 Buxhoeveden,
Before the Storm
, p. 245.

Chapter 6
: The
Shtandart

1 See Zimin,
Tsarskaya rabota
, pp. 262–4.

2 See
SL
, pp. 216–18; Hall, ‘No Bombs, No Bandits’.

3 Grabbe and Grabbe,
Private World
, p. 91.

4 For a detailed description of the interior of the
Shtandart
and life on board the yacht in 1906, see Nikolay Sablin,
Desyat let’
,
pp. 18–39.

See also King,
Court of the Last Tsar
, pp. 274–85 and Tuomi-Nikula,

Imperatory
.

5 The sick Orbeliani was given her own suite of rooms at the Alexander Palace where Alexandra paid for her care and nursed her as her health declined. Sonya died in her arms in December 1915 – see Vyrubova,

Memoirs
,
p. 371. Alexandra’s care of and concern for Orbeliani is typical of how she always looked after those dear to her. See Zimin,

Detskiy mir
, pp. 365–6.

6 Sablin,
Desyat let’
, p. 234.

7 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 38; Vorres,
Last Grand Duchess
, p. 137. For an assessment of Vyrubova’s character see Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, pp. 48–9.

8 Grabbe and Grabbe,
Private World
, p. 57.

9 21 September 1906, Nikolai, accessible @: http://lib.ec/b/384140/

read#t22

10 See Linda Predovsky, ‘The Playhouse on Children’s Island’,
Royalty
Digest
, no. 119, May 2001, pp. 347– 9.

11 ‘Take the “Bumps”: Little Grand Duchesses Experiment with

Toboggan in Czar’s Park’,
Washington Post
,
25 March 1907.

12 Kulikovsky,
25 Chapters
, p. 75.

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NOTES

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid., p. 74; Vorres,
Last Grand Duchess
, p. 111.

15 Ibid.

16 Kulikovsky,
25 Chapters
, p. 75.

17 Vorres,
Last Grand Duchess
, p. 112.

18 Ibid.; Kulikovsky
, 25 Chapters
, p. 74.

19 Zeepvat, introduction to Eagar,
Six Years
, pp. 33, 34.

20 Bonetskaya,
Tsarskie deti
, p. 332. For more on Trina Schneider, a Baltic German, original name Schneiderlein, see Chernova,
Vernye
,

pp. 169–75, 565.

21 The pet name Savanna was a contraction of the names Sofya

Ivanovna. See Sof’ya Ivanovna Tyutcheva, Za neskolko let do

katastrofy’, Vospominaniya’, accessible @: http://lib.rus.

ec/b/327889/read

22 According to an editorial note, these memoirs were dictated by

Tyutcheva to a niece in January 1945.

23 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 75.

24 ‘Children of the Czar’,
Scrap-Book
V, 1908, p. 60.

25 Eagar,
Six Years
, p. 226.

26 John Epps was born in 1848 and went to Russia in 1880 at the age

of thirty-one. When he died in Australia in 1935 he had in his

possession numerous drawings and schoolbooks by the four

Romanov sisters. These went missing for many years, then finally

resurfaced in Australia in 2004, with a relative, Janet Epps. Sadly

the author has not been able to trace either her or the current

location of these precious memorabilia. See @: http://www.abc.

net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1220082.htm

27 See Trewin,
Tutor to the Tsarevich
, p. 10 and Zeepvat,
Cradle to
Crown
, p. 223.

28 Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, p. 163.

29 Nicholas [Gibbes], ‘Ten Years’, p. 9.

30 C. S. Gibbes Papers, List 1 (76), Statement by Gibbes, 1

December 1928, Bodleian Library.

31 Welch
,
Romanovs and Mr Gibbes
, p. 33.

32 For details of the girls’ curriculum, see Girardin,
Précepteur
, p. 49, Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, pp. 162–4, Zimin,
Vzroslyi mir
, pp. 497–8, although there is some inconsistency in the timings of lessons.

33 The plotters – eleven men and seven women of the Socialist

Revolutionary Party, among them ‘the Madonna-like’ Mariya

Prokofieva and the equally attractive general’s daughter ‘Madame

Fedosieff’, both of whom the western press depicted as precursors

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NOTES

of Mata Hari – went on trial in August behind closed doors and a

total press blackout. Three of the male conspirators were

sentenced to death and hanged and several of the women involved

were jailed or, in Prokofieva’s case sent into exile. See ‘Beautiful

Women Accused of Plotting against the Tsar’,
Penny Illustrated

Paper
,
31 August 1907;
SL
, p. 228.

34 Norregaard, ‘The Czar at Home’,
Daily Mail
, 10 June 1908.

35 Ibid.

36 Vyrubova,
Memories
, p. 33.

37 The strong and resourceful Dina, as Alexey called him, was

increasingly relied on to protect the tsarevich against any harm

and paid a generous salary in recognition of this. He would hence-

forth sleep in the room next to Alexey’s in all the imperial resi-

dences. See Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, pp. 82–3.

38 Tuomi-Nikula,
Imperatory
,
pp. 188–9. See also the account in Spiridovich,
Last Years
,
pp. 174–5.

39 Sablin, ‘S tsarskoy sem’ei na “shtandarte”’, f. 4. See also ch. 9 of Spiridovich,
Last Years
and Sablin’s account in
Desyat let’
, pp.

100–4.

40 See Tuomi-Nikula,
Imperatory
,
pp. 188–90; Vyrubova,
Memories
, p.

34.

Chapter 7
: Our Friend

1 384 Dehn,
My Empress
, p. 81.

2 ‘The Three-year-old Heir to the Throne of the Czar’,
Current

Literature
43, no. 1, July 1907, p. 38.

3 Botkin,
Real Romanovs
, p. 28; Spiridovich,
Last Years
, p. 179.

4 Durland,
Royal Romances
, p. 206; Bonetskaya,
Tsarskie deti
, p. 324.

5 Wheeler and Rives,
Dome
, p. 356.

6 Welch,
Romanovs and Mr Gibbes
, p. 37.

7 René Fulop-Miller,
Rasputin: The Holy Devil
(London: G. P. Putnam, 1927), p. 25.

8 Radziwill,
Taint
, p. 196. See also ‘The Three-year-old Heir’, pp. 36–8.

9 Vorres,
Last Grand Duchess
,
p. 142. Olga Alexandrovna’s is one of the very few reliable sources for Alexey’s first serious episodes of haemophilia attacks. See also Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, p. 35.

10 Ibid.

11 Rasputin,
Rasputin
, p. 114.

12 For accounts of this 1907 accident, see Zimin,
Detskiy mir
, p.
35;
402

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NOTES

Vorres,
Last Grand Duchess
, pp. 142–3 ; Spiridovich,
Raspoutine
, p.

71; Rasputin,
Rasputin
, p. 115.

13 De Jonge,
Life and Times of Rasputin
, p. 154.

14 Vorres,
Last Grand Duchess
, p. 142.

15 Buxhoeveden,
Before the Storm
, p. 119.

16 Dolgorouky, ‘Gone For Ever’, TS, Hoover Institution, p. 11.