The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra(14)

35

693GG_TXT.indd 35

29/10/2013 16:17

FOUR SISTERS

The baby had seven sponsors including Queen Victoria and the dowager empress. But most of these could not attend in person, so Maria Feodorovna presided, resplendent in Russian national dress and jewelled kokoshnik, surrounded by most of the Russian grand dukes and duchesses. During the service, the baby ‘was dipped three times into the water in the orthodox way and then was straight laid into a pink satin quilted bag, dried and undressed, & returned to the gamp [nurse], who was very important in corded silk’.44 Olga was then anointed with holy oil on her face, eyes, ears, hands and feet and carried round the church three times by Maria Feodorovna, with one of the godfathers on either side of her. When the ceremony was over, Nicholas invested his daughter with the Order of St Catherine.

Olga’s difficult birth had, inevitably, left Alexandra considerably weakened and she was not allowed out of bed until 18 November.

Thereafter, she went for quiet drives in the park with Nicky but despite the presence of her brother and his wife Ducky (Victoria Melita’s pet name in the family), she took little advantage of their company, even though they were only there for a week. Ducky complained in letters to relatives of her boredom, of how Alix was rather distant and that she talked endlessly of Nicky and ‘praise[d]

him so much all the time’, that she came to the conclusion that her sister-in-law preferred being on her own with him.45 She certainly jealously guarded her time with Nicky; the rest of it was spent mothering Olga. Orchie was still in evidence, as a superannuated family retainer, given the token role of supervising the running of the nursery, but she was not entrusted with the baby’s care, even when Madame Günst – who stayed on as maternity nurse for three months – was laid up for a couple of days.46 The presence of Günst caused considerable disgruntlement. ‘Orchie slept in the blue room and scarcely spoke to me, so offended we did not have Baby with her’, Alexandra told Ernie.47

Professional English nannies were sticklers for routine and did not like being usurped in their roles, and the arrival on 18 December of Queen Victoria’s hand-picked recruit, the redoubtable Mrs Inman, was not a happy one. Nicholas remarked that his wife was worried that ‘the new English nanny would in some way affect the way of things in our daily family life’. And sure enough she did, for the 36

693GG_TXT.indd 36

29/10/2013 16:17

LA PETITE DUCHESSE

protocols of royal nannying demanded that ‘our little daughter will have to be moved upstairs, which is a real bore and a shame’.48 The day after Mrs Inman arrived baby Olga was duly removed from Nicholas and Alexandra’s ground-floor bedroom to the nursery and Nicholas was already writing to his brother Georgiy, complaining that he and Alexandra ‘[did] not particularly like the look of Mrs Inman’. ‘She has something hard and unpleasant in her face,’ he told him, ‘and looks like a stubborn woman.’ Both he and Alexandra thought she was ‘going to be a lot of trouble’, for she had immediately started laying down the law: ‘she has already decided that our daughter does not have enough rooms, and that, in her opinion, Alix pops up into the nursery too often.’49

For the time being, the only sight the Russian people might be likely to get of their tsar and tsaritsa would not be at court in St Petersburg but wheeling their baby in the grounds of the Alexander Park. The world beyond knew even less of them. The British press had hoped that the tsaritsa’s informal approach to mothering might have a positive effect politically: ‘The right feeling shown in the young wife’s decision is likelier to rally the mothers of Russia to her Majesty’s side than many more imposing actions on the part of the Czar’s Consort. And with their support the Empress may go far.’50

It was an ambitious hope, but one that would fall on fallow ground; for the fact that the empress had not produced a firstborn son was already a source of disfavour among many Russians.

In the new year of 1896 and much to her dismay, Alexandra was obliged to abandon the intimacy of the Alexander Palace and transfer to her newly renovated apartments at the Winter Palace for the St Petersburg season. Although Ella had taken a hand in their design, the unworldly and inexperienced Alexandra did not take to the grand, ceremonial ambience of the palace. Nor was she warming to Mrs Inman. ‘I am not at all enchanted with the nurse’, she told Ernie: she is good & kind with Baby, but as a woman most antipathetic, & that disturbs me sorely. Her manners are neither very nice, & she will mimic people in speaking about them, an odious habit, wh.[ich] would be awful for a Child to learn – most headstrong, (but I am too, thank goodness). I foresee no end of troubles, & only wish I had an other [ sic].51

37

693GG_TXT.indd 37

29/10/2013 16:17

FOUR SISTERS

By the end of April Alexandra was forced to give up breastfeeding Olga in preparation for travelling to Moscow for the arduous coronation ceremony: ‘that is so sad as I enjoyed it so much’, she confided to Ernie.52 By this time the domineering Mrs Inman had been sent packing. Nicholas had found her ‘insufferable’ and on 29 April noted with glee that ‘we were delighted finally to be rid of her’. Motherhood clearly became Alexandra, as her sister Victoria of Battenberg noted when she arrived for the coronation in May 1896. Alix, she told Queen Victoria,

is looking so well & happy, quite a different person & has developed into a big, handsome woman rosy cheeked & broad shoul-dered making Ella look small near her – she feels her leg a little from time to time & gets a headache off & on – but there is nothing left of the sad & drooping look she used to have.53