The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (46 page)

Adamov in the ‘Erevan’ Ward. ‘The Grand Duchesses greeted me

like an old friend’, he recalled, and began asking questions about

how the regiment was, about the officers they knew and so on.

What sweet simple people, I instinctively thought, and with every

day I became more and more convinced of this. I was a witness

of their daily work and was struck by their patience, persistence,

their great skill for difficult work and their tenderness and kind-

ness to everyone around them.14

Barely five weeks later, much to Olga’s joy, and despite the unfor-

tunate circumstances, Dmitri Shakh-Bagov was brought back to the

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hospital, having been seriously wounded on a reconnaissance mission

near Zagrody in eastern Poland. He arrived on 2 August on a

stretcher with a shattered leg and a hand wound, much thinner and

looking very pale, and was immediately taken back to his former

bed in the Erevan Ward.15 He was operated on and his leg put in

plaster but although he was supposed to be confined to bed he was

soon up and hobbling round after Olga like a devoted puppy. ‘It

soon became noticeable how her previous mood returned . . . and

her sweet eyes shone once more’, noted Ivan Belyaev.16 Olga’s Dmitri

now began appearing regularly in her diary in the affectionate form

of Mitya. She spent every precious moment she could in his company

– sitting with him in the corridor, on the balcony and in the ward,

as well as during the evenings when she sterilized the instruments

and made up the cotton-wool swabs. She had every reason to feel

deeply for him, for everyone loved Mitya. Konstantin Popov was

fulsome in his praise of him as ‘a distinguished and brave officer, a rare friend and wonderfully good-natured person. If one were to

add to this his handsome appearance and his great ability to wear

his uniform and deport himself with distinction then you would

have an example of the young Erevan officer in whom in truth our

regiment prides itself.’17 Mitya was ‘very sweet and shy, like a girl’, remembered Ivan Belyaev, and what is more, ‘it was evident that he

was completely in love with his nursing sister. His cheeks became

brightly flushed whenever he looked at Olga Nikolaevna.’18

While Olga’s head might have been turned, there was no dimi-

nution in the compassion and care that she, like Tatiana, continued

to offer to all their patients. Valentina Chebotareva remembered a

particularly traumatic operation at which both sisters had assisted

and how bitterly they had wept when the patient had died. ‘How

poetic Tatiana Nikolaevna’s caresses are! How warmly she speaks

when she calls on the telephone and reads the telegrams about her

wounded’, Valentina wrote in her diary. ‘What a good, pure and

deep feeling girl she is.’19 That summer, the highly reserved Tatiana, who had until now only shown passing interest in Dmitri Malama,

appeared to have fallen for Vladimir Kiknadze – or Volodya as she

was soon calling him – another Georgian and a 2nd lieutenant in

the 3rd Guards Rifles Regiment. The two sisters began enjoying

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trysts as a foursome in the garden playing croquet with Kiknadze

and Shakh-Bagov, and falling into a routine of shared smiles and

confidences, sitting on their beds and looking at albums and taking

each other’s photograph. The war, for a while, did not seem quite

so grim.

*

Throughout 1915 Nicholas had managed to make regular trips back

home to Tsarskoe Selo but in August he made a momentous deci-

sion that would take him away from the family for even longer

periods. A succession of Russian defeats on the Eastern Front,

resulting in a massive retreat from Galicia, had already seen 1.4

million Russians killed and wounded and 1 million captured. Morale

in a poorly equipped imperial army was haemorrhaging away. In

response he dismissed his uncle Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich

as Commander-in-Chief of the army and took over command

himself, moving Stavka to Mogilev, 490 miles (790 km) due south

of Petrograd. This decision, like every other the tsar made during

the war, was guided by his deeply held belief that the people trusted in him as their spiritual leader and that the fate of himself, his family and Russia lay in God’s hands. At 10 p.m. on 22 August the children

went to the station with him. ‘My precious papa!’ Olga wrote as

soon as he had left. ‘How sad it is that you are leaving but this time it is with a special feeling of joy that we see you off, because we all fervently believe that your arrival there will more than ever raise

the strong spirit of our mighty, national Army.’ ‘Here I am with

this
new
heavy responsibility on my shoulders!’ Nicholas told Alexandra upon his arrival. ‘But God’s will be fulfilled – I feel so

calm.’20 Two months later he made another important decision: at

the end of a visit home he took Alexey back with him to Stavka,

partly for company, as he missed the family so terribly, but also

because he and Alexandra both believed that the tsarevich’s presence

would be a huge boost to army morale. Alexey, now aged eleven,

was ecstatic; much as he loved his mother he was desperate to escape

her suffocating presence and no doubt also the over-protectiveness

of his sisters. As he would later complain: ‘I hate going back to

Tsarskoe to be the only man amongst all those women.’21

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Since the outbreak of war Alexey had been playing soldiers at

home, proudly strutting around in his soldier’s greatcoat – ‘quite

like a little military man’ as Alix told Nicky – standing guard, digging trenches and fortifications in the palace gardens with his
dyadki
and in the process sometimes provoking attacks of pain in his arms.22

But aside from this he was in better health than he had been for

years and for some time now had had no serious attacks. It was hard

for Alexandra to let her boy go, but she agreed on condition that

Alexey’s studies should not be interrupted. He was by now, however,

woefully behind in his lessons and although he was followed to

Stavka by both PVP and Pierre Gilliard, he rarely knuckled down

to a full day’s lessons, preferring the distractions of board games,

playing his balalaika and enjoying the company of his new dog, a

cocker spaniel named Joy.23 At Stavka Alexey was in his element,

sharing the same Spartan living conditions with his father, sleeping

on campbeds, going on trips to army camps, inspecting the troops

with him and enjoying the camaraderie of the soldiers, and taking

particular pleasure in swimming with his father in the River Dnieper.

Back at Tsarskoe everyone in the entourage felt the absence of father and son: ‘life at the Imperial Palace became, if possible, even quieter’, recalled Iza Buxhoeveden. ‘The whole place seemed dead. There

was no movement in the great courtyard. We ladies-in-waiting went

to the Empress through a series of empty halls.’24 Whenever Nicholas

and Alexey returned on visits, ‘the palace sprang to life’.

At Stavka the young heir made a strong impression on all who

met him. True he could still be brattish, particularly at table where he had a penchant for throwing pellets of bread at his father’s ADCs.25

But his extraordinary energy lit up a room. ‘It was the first time I

had seen the Tsarevich when the door of our box flung open and

he came like a gale of wind’, recalled US naval attaché Newton

McCully:

Full of life, healthy looking, and one of the handsomest young-

sters I have ever seen, I was particularly glad to see him so closely because I had heard so many rumors about his being paralyzed

– maimed for life – and so on. One could not wish to see a

handsomer child. Undoubtedly he has been ill, but there are no

signs of illness about him now – if anything perhaps a too

exuberant vitality, perhaps an organism over-nervous.26

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In mid-October, Alexandra, Anna Vyrubova and the girls visited

Mogilev, in time to see Alexey awarded the Medal of St George 4th

class. They were all delighted to see the continuing improvement

in his health and strength. ‘He was developing marvelously through

the summer both in bodily vigor and gaiety of spirits’, recalled Anna Vyrubova. ‘With his tutors, M. Gilliard and Petrov, he romped and

played as though illness were a thing to him unknown.’27 The visit

was a welcome break for the girls from their virtually monastic life

at Tsarskoe. At Stavka they had more freedom to move around; they

spent time playing with the children of railway workers and local

peasants (whom Tatiana photographed for her album, scrupulously

noting down all their names), though once more there were whis-

perings that the imperial sisters should not stoop so low in their

friendships and that they looked scruffy and ‘unroyal’.28

The Governor’s House at Mogilev that served as HQ was too

cramped to accommodate all the family, so Alexandra and the girls

stayed on the imperial train, where Nicholas and Alexey dined with

them in the evenings. The train was parked in the midst of wooded

countryside and the girls were able to go walking unobserved and

often unrecognized. Out in the woods they made bonfires and roasted

potatoes with members of the Tsar’s Escort much as they had done

on their Finnish holidays; they slept in the sunshine on the new-

mown hay and even enjoyed the occasional cigarette given to them

by Nicholas. For the rest of the time it was boat rides on the River

Dnieper and games of hide-and-seek on the imperial train, and even

occasional visits to the local cinematograph in Mogilev.29 But in

many of the photographs taken that October, Olga looked withdrawn

and pensive, often sitting apart from the others. She came back from

Stavka with a bad cough and Valentina Chebotareva immediately

became concerned, not just about her melancholy frame of mind,

but also her visibly declining health:

Her nerves are completely shot to pieces, she’s got thinner and

paler. She hasn’t been able to do the bandaging lately, can’t bear

to look at wounds and in the operating theatre is distressed,

becomes irritable, tries to do things and can’t control herself –

feels dizzy. It’s awful to see the child, how sad and overwrought

she is. They say it’s exhaustion.30

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In her later memoirs Anna Vyrubova claimed that although

Tatiana from the outset demonstrated ‘extraordinary ability’ as a

nurse, ‘Olga within two months [of her training] was almost too

exhausted and too unnerved to continue’.31 It was clear that the long hours were taking their toll on her, that she was less resilient

emotionally and physically than Tatiana, and also far less focused.

She could not cope with the trauma of some of the operations she

witnessed, nor could she knuckle down to regular routine as easily

as her sister. And now she was distracted yet again by her feelings

– this time for Mitya Shakh-Bagov. The exhaustion she was suffering

was compounded by severe anaemia and, like her mother, she was

put on a course of daily arsenic injections. ‘Olga’s condition still not famous’, Alexandra telegraphed Nicholas on 31 October, adding in

a letter that their daughter had ‘only got up for a drive & now after tea she remains on the sopha and we shall dine upstairs – this is my

treatment – she must lie more, as goes about so pale and wearily

– the Arsenic injections will act quicker like that, you see’.32
*

A few days later they were all celebrating Olga’s twentieth

birthday, but of late she had hardly been to the annexe and when

she did go, as she told her father, she ‘didn’t do anything, just sat with them. But they still make me lie down a lot.’ She didn’t like

the daily arsenic injections from Dr Botkin: ‘I reek of garlic a bit, which is not nice.’33
†
Whatever her private thoughts might have been at this time, Olga, like her sisters, retained a stoical acceptance of her lot. Fellow nurse Bibi happened to be visiting at the palace

one evening when Olga and Tatiana were getting changed for dinner

and choosing jewellery. ‘The only shame is that no one can enjoy

seeing me like this,’ quipped Olga, ‘only papa!’ The remark was

made, as Bibi told Valentina, totally without affectation. ‘One, two

and her hair’s done (though no hairdo as such), and she didn’t even

* Arsenic was a popular remedy for such ailments at the time. For example, diplomat’s wife Dorothy Bosanquet spent time in Tsarskoe Selo in April 1916

when recovering from pleurisy, where she went every afternoon to the Palace Hospital to have an arsenic injection at 50 kopeks a time.

† If heated, arsenic oxidizes and produces arsenic trioxide, the smell of which resembles garlic. Plain arsenic also smells like garlic when it evaporates.