The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra(20)

In order to avoid confusion, the older Maria Pavlovna will be referred to throughout as Grand Duchess Vladimir.





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in honour of her grandmother, and Alexandra was soon happily breastfeeding her.

Nicholas registered no obvious air of dismay, his religious fatalism no doubt playing a part in his phlegmatic response. Nevertheless, it was noticed that soon after the baby was born ‘he set off on a long solitary walk’. He returned, ‘as outwardly unruffled as ever’, and noted in his diary that this had been another ‘happy day’. ‘The Lord sent us a third daughter.’ God’s will be done; he was recon-ciled30 Grand Duke Konstantin, however, once again expressed what Nicholas was probably feeling deep inside: ‘And so there’s no Heir.

The whole of Russia will be disappointed by this news.’31

‘I am so thankful that dear Alicky has recovered so well’, wrote Queen Victoria on receiving the telegram, but she could not conceal the dynastic issue it raised: ‘I regret the 3rd girl for the country. I know that an Heir would be more welcome than a daughter.’32 ‘Poor Alix . . . had another daughter, and it seems she was so ill the whole time with it poor thing’, wrote Crown Princess Marie of Romania to her mother the Duchess of Coburg. ‘Now I suppose she will have to begin over again and then once more she will shut herself up and it discontents everyone.’33

When the European press got news of the arrival of yet another daughter they had a field day. The talk in St Petersburg, alleged Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, is

that the birth of a third daughter to the Czar is regarded as an event of great political importance. Absurd as it may sound, there is a strong party there which waited only for this event to resume their mischievous intrigues against the Czarina, in whom they hate the Princess of Anglo-German blood. The influence of the Empress-Dowager, whose relations with her daughter-in-law are, as is known, anything but cordial, is expected to increase.34

Another paper came up with a more chilling claim: ‘it is reported that the Dowager-Empress, who is evidently superstitious, on her arrival at Peterhof, met the Czar with the accusatory words: “Six daughters have been foretold unto me: to-day the half of the prophecy has been fulfilled.”’35 At home in Russia the birth of a third daughter certainly fuelled the widespread superstitious belief





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FOUR SISTERS

that Alexandra’s arrival in Russia – in the dying days of Alexander III – had been a bad omen for the marriage: ‘The birth of three daughters in succession with the empire still lacking an heir was seen as proof that their forebodings had been well founded.’36 A manifestation of how close rampant superstition lay beneath the surface of official Orthodoxy was brought home to Margaretta Eagar at Maria’s christening a fortnight later. After the baby was dipped in the font three times, ‘the hair was cut in four places, in the form of a cross. What was cut off was rolled in wax and thrown into the font.’ Eagar was told that ‘according to Russian superstition the good or evil future of the child’s life depends on whether the hair sinks or swims’. She was happy to note: ‘Little Marie’s hair behaved in an orthodox fashion and all sank at once, so there is no need for alarm concerning her future.’37

Nicholas put a brave face on it and sent his wife a note: ‘I dare complain the least, having such happiness on earth, having a treasure like you my beloved Alix, and already the three little cherubs. From the depth of my heart do I thank God for all His blessings, in giving me you. He gave me paradise and has made my life an easy and happy one.’38 Such depth of feeling did not square with the confident claim of the Paris correspondent of The Times that the tsar was ‘weary of rule’. Apparently so dejected was Nicholas at the birth of another daughter that he had declared himself ‘disappointed and tired of the throne’ and was about to abdicate. ‘The absence of an heir excites his superstitious feelings,’ it went on to explain, ‘and he connects himself with a Russian legend according to which an heir-less czar is to be succeeded by a Czar Michael, predestined to occupy Constantinople.’39

*

As things turned out Margaretta Eagar coped happily with the arrival of the new baby. She found her charges most endearing, particularly the precociously bright and quizzical Olga. The two older girls were fine-looking children and Tatiana had a particular delicate beauty.

But it was the new baby who stole Margaretta’s heart: Maria ‘was born good, I often think, with the very smallest trace of original sin possible’.40 And who could resist her? She was ‘a real beauty, very





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big with enormous blue eyes’, according to the Duchess of Coburg; a gentleman at court went one better, remarking that little Maria ‘had the face of one of Botticelli’s angels’.41

By 1900 the three little Romanov sisters were attracting considerable attention abroad, with much discussion of which was the prettiest, cleverest, or most endearing. ‘The flower of the flock, as far as looks are concerned . . . is Grand Duchess Tatiana’, was the opinion of the British magazine, Woman at Home. ‘She is a real beauty, with dark pathetic eyes, and wistful little mouth. But the Grand Duchess Olga, the eldest, is such a hearty, merry child, everybody loves her.’ The author of the article wondered, as others had done since the Balmoral visit, ‘whether she is destined to be our future Queen Consort!’.42