The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra(13)

roubles (as he would be for delivering all the Romanov children); Evgeniya Günst received around 3,000 roubles each time.35

There was, inevitably, a sense of disappointment in the wider Romanov family, expressed by Grand Duchess Xenia, who thought Olga’s birth ‘a great joy, although it’s a pity it’s not a son!’.36 Such disquiet was not of course expressed in any of the heavily censored Russian press. The whole of St Petersburg had been eagerly anticipating the event, to be announced by the boom of cannons across the Neva. When the moment came ‘people opened their windows, others rushed out into the street to hear and count the volleys’. But alas the number of rounds fired was only 101; for a first son and heir it would have been 301.37 The news reached many of the thea-tres in St Petersburg just as people were leaving at the end of the evening performance. It ‘duly called forth patriotic demonstrations from the audiences, in response to whose wish the Russian national anthem had to be played several times’.38 In Paris’s Little Russia, a Te Deum was sung at the St Alexander Nevsky Orthodox Church on rue Daru in celebration of the tsaritsa’s safe delivery. But the British press was quick to note an element of dismay in Russian political and diplomatic circles: ‘A son would have been more welcome than a daughter, but a daughter is better than nothing’, observed the Pall Mall Gazette.39 At a time when Russia and England were still to some extent political rivals, the Daily Chronicle wondered * The Russian equivalent of Obstetrician-in-Ordinary.

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whether baby Olga ‘might be made a peg to hang an Anglo-Russian understanding on’ at some future date. The seed was sown for a rapprochement between the Russian and British royal families, and what better way than through a future dynastic marriage?

On 5 November 1895 an Imperial Manifesto was issued in St Petersburg greeting Grand Duchess Olga’s birth: ‘Inasmuch as we regard this accession to the Imperial House as a token of the bless-ings vouchsafed to our House and Empire, we notify the joyful event to all our faithful subjects, and join with them in offering fervent prayers to the Almighty that the newly born Princess may grow up in happiness and strength.’40 In a magnanimous gesture to celebrate his daughter’s birth, Nicholas announced an amnesty for political and religious prisoners, who were given a free pardon, as well as remittances in sentence for common criminals.

But not everyone shared the optimistic view of little Olga’s future; early in the new year of 1896 a curious story appeared in the French press. Prince Charles of Denmark (soon to be married to Princess Maud of Wales, daughter of Alexandra’s cousin Bertie) had, it appeared, been ‘exercising his ingenuity in drawing the horoscope of the Czar’s infant daughter’. In it the prince predicted critical periods in Olga’s health at ‘her third, fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth years’. In so doing, he felt unable to ‘guarantee that she will even reach the last-named age, but if she does she will assuredly reach twenty’. This, the prince concluded, would grant ‘twelve years of peace to be thankful for’. For ‘it is certain . . . that she will never live to be thirty’.41

*

The moment her new great-granddaughter was born, Queen

Victoria, as godmother, took it upon herself to ensure that the baby had a good English nanny and promptly set about recruiting one.

But she was horrified when Alexandra announced her intention to breastfeed, just as her mother Alice had done. The British press quickly got wind of what, for the times, was sensational news. It was unheard-of for sovereigns – particularly imperial Russian ones – to breastfeed their children. The news had ‘astonished all the Russians’ although a wet-nurse was also to be appointed as essential 34

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back-up. ‘A large number of peasant women . . . were gathered from various parts’ for the selection process. ‘None of them was to be the mother of fewer than two or more than four children, and those of dark complexion were to be preferred.’42 Alexandra’s first attempts at breastfeeding did not, however, go to plan, for baby Olga rejected her, and, as Nicholas recalled, it ‘ended up with Alix very successfully feeding the son of the wet-nurse, while the latter gave milk to Olga! Very funny!’ ‘For my part I consider it the most natural thing a mother can do and I think the example an excellent one!’ he told Queen Victoria soon after.43

Alexandra, as one might expect, bloomed as a nursing mother; her whole world, and Nicholas’s, revolved around their adored newborn daughter. The tsar delighted in recording every detail of her life in his diary: the first time she slept through the night, how he helped feed and bathe her, the emergence of her baby teeth, the clothes she wore, the first photographs he took of her. Neither he nor Alexandra of course noted that little Olga was in fact not the prettiest of babies – her large moon-shaped head with its awkward quiff of blonde hair that replaced the long dark hair she was born with, was too large for her body, and made her seem almost ugly to some members of the imperial family. But she was, from the outset a good, chubby and happy baby and her doting parents rarely let her out of their sight.

On the morning of 14 November 1895 – her parents’ wedding anniversary and the Dowager Empress’s forty-eighth birthday – Olga Nikolaevna Romanova was christened (with just the one given name, according to Russian Orthodox practice). It was a particularly joyful occasion for the imperial court as it marked the end of official mourning for Tsar Alexander III. The baby was dressed in Nicholas’s own christening robes and conveyed in a gold state coach drawn by six white horses, accompanied by the Tsar’s Escort, to the Church of the Resurrection, the imperial chapel at Tsarskoe Selo. From here, Princess Mariya Golitsyna, the mistress of the robes, carried Olga to the font on a golden cushion. In line with Russian Orthodox practice, Nicholas and Alexandra did not attend the actual ceremony, at which members of the Orthodox synod, illustrious royal relatives, diplomats and foreign VIPs, all in full court dress, were gathered.