The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra(16)

During their stay baby Olga had been trying to take her first steps and her two-year-old cousin David – son of the Duke of York and the future Edward VIII – had taken a shine to her, going to see her daily and offering an encouraging hand, so that by the time the family left, Olga was able to toddle across the drawing room holding his hand. Queen Victoria noted the children together with marked interest. It was a pretty pairing; ‘La Belle Alliance’, she is 40

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said to have approvingly remarked to Nicholas. The imagination of the British press quickly ran riot, with claims even of an informal betrothal.67

On one of the finer days of their visit the first and only cine-matograph film of Nicholas and Alexandra with Queen Victoria was made in the courtyard at Balmoral, filmed by William Downey, the royal photographer. Before leaving, the couple planted a tree to commemorate their visit. Alexandra had enjoyed being back in Scotland and was sad to go: ‘It has been such a very short stay and I leave dear kind Grandmama with a heavy heart’, she told her old governess Madge Jackson. ‘Who knows when we may meet again and where?’68

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On 3 October (NS) the imperial family took the train south to Portsmouth where they boarded the Polyarnaya zvezda for a five-day state visit to France. From Cherbourg to Paris, they were greeted by huge crowds lining the streets, and arrived in the capital to a grand reception at the Elysée Palace hosted by President Faure.

The French were fascinated that such distinguished monarchs should have their baby on tour with them rather than leave her behind in the nursery. Olga was so adaptable and had such a placid tempera-ment that she travelled well, sitting on her nurse’s lap in an open landau. Her smiling presence, with her nurse helping her wave her hand to the crowd and blow them kisses, endeared her to everyone.

‘Our daughter made a great impression everywhere’, Nicholas told his mother. The first thing President Faure asked Alexandra each day was the health of la petite duchesse. Everywhere they went little Olga was greeted by shouts of ‘ Vive la bébé’; some even called her La tsarinette.69 A polka was specially composed ‘Pour la Grande Duchesse Olga’ and all kinds of souvenirs and commemorative china were on sale, featuring her picture as well as that of her parents. By the end of her parents’ foreign tour, the little Russian grand duchess was one of the most discussed royal children in the world. She was certainly the richest, with it being alleged that ￡1 million had been invested in her name in British, French and other securities when she was born.70 Nicholas had certainly settled money on his daughter, 41

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as he would for all his children, but it would be far less than the outlandish amounts suggested and was, effectively, money left them in Alexander III’s will.71 Nevertheless rumours of Croesus-like riches being heaped on the child led to fanciful ideas put about in the American press that little Olga was rocked in a mother-of-pearl cradle, her nappies fixed with gold safety pins set with pearls.72

After a private nineteen-day visit to Ernie and his family in Darmstadt in October, Nicholas and Alexandra returned to Russia overland on the imperial train and promptly retreated to their quiet life at Tsarskoe Selo, where they celebrated Olga’s first birthday in November. Alexandra was by now pregnant again and her second pregnancy proved a difficult one. By December she was suffering severe pain in her side and back and there were fears of a miscar-riage.73 Ott and Günst were summoned and confined Alexandra to bed; there was a total clampdown on news and it was early the following year, 1897, before even members of the imperial family were told.

After a long and wearying seven weeks of bed rest, Alexandra was finally allowed outside in a wheelchair. She was not sorry to have to miss the winter season in Petersburg, but in PR terms this was a disaster. Her absence from view and the rumours of her continuing poor health had done their work in further eroding what little goodwill she enjoyed in Russia. Superstition and rumour began to gain a foothold and persisted ever after, focusing on the tsaritsa’s desperate hopes for a boy. One story in circulation was that ‘four blind nuns from Kiev’ had been brought to Tsarskoe Selo at the suggestion of the Montenegrin princess, Militza (wife of Grand Duke Petr Nikolaevich), who herself was a fan of faith healing and the occult. These women, it was said, had brought with them ‘four specially blessed candles and four flasks of water from a well in Bethlehem’. Having lit the candles at each corner of Alexandra’s bed and sprinkled her with the Bethlehem water, they assured her she would have a boy.74 Another tale suggested that a deformed and half-blind cripple called Mitya Kolyaba, who had supposed powers of prophecy that only became apparent during violent epileptic fits, was also brought in to work a miracle on the empress. On being taken to see her he had said nothing, but had later prophesied the 42

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birth of a male child and was sent gifts by the grateful imperial couple.75 But nothing could allay either Alexandra’s rising anxiety or the pressure she was under, made worse when her sister Irene, Princess Henry of Prussia, gave birth to a second boy in November and her sister-in-law Xenia produced her second baby – a son – in January.

Although she was up and about again, Alexandra could not face a return to public duties, even in a wheelchair – her sciatica being aggravated by the discomforts of the pregnancy. ‘I am beginning to look a pretty sight already, & I dread appearing half high for the Emperor of Austria after Easter,’ she told Ernie, ‘I can only walk half an hour, more tires me too much, & stand I can’t at all.’76 She endured the pain with characteristic fortitude, for ‘what happiness can be greater than living for a little being one is going to give one’s treasured husband’. As for Olga, ‘Baby is growing & tries to chatter, the beautiful air gives her nice pink cheeks. She is such a bright little Sunbeam, always merry & smiling.’77