The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (32 page)

empress and stretched out his hand offering her an orange, which

she had politely accepted. ‘It was the most ordinary looking fruit,’

recalled Nikolay Vasilievich Sablin, ‘but as we later said amongst

ourselves, a terrible thought had flashed by, “That so-called

Macedonian orange might have been a bomb!”’26 The bazaar was a

great success and raised thousands of roubles for Alexandra’s good

causes. It also provided an opportunity for people to see the elusive tsarevich. Anna Vyrubova remembered how on these occasions

‘smiling with pleasure, the Empress would lift him to the table,

where the child would bow shyly but sweetly, stretching out his

hands in friendly greeting to the worshipping crowds’. 27

*

During the imperial family’s time in Livadia many of their favourite

officers from the
Shtandart
were in evidence and as usual the four
167

693GG_TXT.indd 167

29/10/2013 16:17

FOUR SISTERS

sisters were ‘allowed to have a little preference for this or that handsome young officer with whom they danced, played tennis, walked,

or rode’ – though always in the presence of a chaperone.28 That

year Tatiana seemed to be taking a particular shine to Count

Alexander Vorontsov-Dashkov – a hussar in the Life Guards from

a distinguished Russian family, who was one of Nicholas’s ADCs

and a favourite tennis partner. Although Tatiana was not yet sixteen, the matchmakers would soon be busy pairing of her off. Indeed,

they were already busily predicting future possible dynastic unions

for all four girls. So anxious was the tsar to keep the Balkan states faithful to Russia, it was asserted, that he intended ‘to utilize his four daughters, who are not to marry four Russian Grand Dukes,

nor even four unorthodox Princes of Europe’. No, the four grand

duchesses of Russia, so the rumour went, were to become ‘Queens

of the Balkans’, with Olga a bride for Prince George of Serbia;

Tatiana for Prince George of Greece; Maria for Prince Carol of

Romania and Anastasia set for Prince Boris of Bulgaria – although

other press reports had gone so far as to claim that Boris was in

fact about to be betrothed to Olga.29

When Olga had celebrated her name day the previous July on

board the
Shtandart
,
among the gifts and bouquets of flowers presented to her by the officers had been a home-made card, the

suggestiveness of which was obvious. ‘What do you think it was?’

Tatiana wrote to Aunt Olga. ‘There was a cardboard frame with a

portrait of David cut out from a newspaper.’ Olga had ‘laughed at

it long and hard’, but her less worldly sister Tatiana had been

offended: ‘Not one of the officers wishes to confess that he had

done it. Such swine, aren’t they?’30 It can be no coincidence that

eleven days prior to Tatiana’s writing this letter, the formal investi-ture ceremony for their cousin David, as Prince of Wales, had taken

place.

There is no doubt that ever since the coronation of the new king,

George V, in June 1911, talk had been brewing in Britain that ‘the

next greatest event to which the people may look forward will be

the marriage of Prince Edward of Wales [David], heir apparent to

the throne’.31 He was only seventeen but already the royal marriage

brokers had drawn up a list of the seven most eligible princesses,

168

693GG_TXT.indd 168

29/10/2013 16:17

‘CUPID BY THE THRONES’

with the names of both Olga and Tatiana at the top. The
Washington
Post
was sceptical: ‘A marriage with any Russian princess would certainly not be popular in England’, it averred, citing the example

of Maria Alexandrovna, Alexander II’s daughter who had married

the Duke of Edinburgh and was now the Duchess of Coburg, and

who ‘never in the least identified herself with English affairs or ways, but remained always a stranger’. The paper was certain that ‘the

same fate would probably attend a Russian queen’.32

All this foreign press speculation was of course entirely without

foundation; for in Russia in 1912 it was assumed that Olga

Nikolaevna’s affections were for someone much closer to home. Of

all the highborn dukes and princes whose names were being bandied

about as possible husbands for the tsar’s eldest daughter, his first

cousin, twenty-year-old Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, seemed to

be the perfect candidate. Tall and slim – ‘as elegant as a Fabergé

statuette’, in the words of his uncle Grand Duke Sergey – Dmitri

was naturally sociable and witty; and, most important of all, he was

a Russian.33 His debonair manner was extremely disarming and he

already had a well-known way with women. ‘Nobody had an easier,

a more brilliant debut in life than he’, as his sister Maria recalled: He had a large fortune with very few responsibilities attached

to it, unusually good looks coupled with charm, and he also had

been the recognized favourite of the Tsar. Even before he had

finished his studies and joined the Horse Guards, there was no

young prince in Europe more socially conspicuous than he was

both in his own country and abroad. He walked a golden path,

petted and fêted by everyone.34

Dmitri and Maria were the children of Grand Duke Pavel

Alexandrovich, who was in turn the youngest of the six sons of Tsar

Alexander II. Their mother had died as the result of a boating

accident that had triggered Dmitri’s premature birth, and when in

1902 the widowed Pavel provoked scandal by marrying again, to a

commoner, Nicholas, who was anxious to stem the incidence of

morganatic marriages in the Romanov family, sent him into exile.

With Pavel living in the south of France, his brother Grand Duke

Sergey and his wife Ella, who had no children of their own, became

Dmitri and Maria’s guardians. After Sergey was assassinated in 1905

169

693GG_TXT.indd 169

29/10/2013 16:17

FOUR SISTERS

(his large estate eventually passed on to Dmitri by Ella) Nicholas

and Alexandra effectively took over responsibility for his and Maria’s upbringing. In May 1908 the widowed Ella had encouraged eighteen-year-old Maria into a dynastic marriage with Prince Wilhelm of

Sweden. With the loss of his only and adored sibling Dmitri grav-

itated ever more towards the imperial family as surrogates and was

now on such intimate terms with Nicholas and Alexandra that he

often addressed them as Papa and Mama (even though Nicholas

had eventually allowed his own father to return to Russia). In 1909

Dmitri had entered the Officers’ Cavalry School in St Petersburg,

the traditional finishing establishment for young men of the

Romanov aristocracy, at the end of which he was commissioned as

a cornet in the Horse Guards. During those three years he often

spent his free time out at Tsarskoe Selo and regularly joined the

tsar in military manoeuvres at nearby Krasnoe Selo, often acting as

Nicholas’s aide-de-camp; in the spring of 1912 he had joined the

family in Livadia for three weeks.

At some point during 1912, and in the light of the tsarevich’s

precarious health, Nicholas and Alexandra must have considered the

possibility that, should Alexey die, Dmitri would be the ideal match

for Olga as potential heir. Nicholas was intent anyway in creating

her co-regent with her mother, should he die before Alexey reached

the age of twenty-one.35 Indeed, there was a great deal of logic in

such a marriage; it would have been immensely popular in Russia,

for Dmitri was one of their own; even better, from Nicholas and

Alexandra’s point of view, it would have spared Olga the agony,

which she dreaded, of a marriage that might force to her leave

Russia. A marriage to Dmitri Pavlovich would give him the title of

joint heir presumptive, should Nicholas go even further and change

the succession laws in Olga’s favour after Alexey. Becoming tsar was

a role that Dmitri coveted; at present he was sixth in line to the

throne, but if he married Olga, that might all change.

Despite the twenty-three-year age difference, Dmitri and Nicholas

greatly enjoyed each other’s company; they loved playing billiards

together in Nicholas’s study and developed a father–son relationship

so close that Dmitri always spoke extremely frankly – if not with a

degree of bawdy, even homosexual innuendo – to him, in the manner

170

693GG_TXT.indd 170

29/10/2013 16:17

‘CUPID BY THE THRONES’

of fellow officers in the barracks, such as signing off this letter from St Petersburg of October 1911:

This capital of yours, or, to speak with perfect clarity, MY capital, does not favour us with good weather. It’s so shitty that it’s just

frightful – dirty and cold . . . Well, and now I wrap my illegiti-

mate mother in a firm embrace (the fault is mine – I am an

illegitimate son, not she an illegitimate mother). I give the chil-

dren a big, wet kiss, [and] you I clasp in my arms (but not without

the proper respect). I am devoted to you with my whole heart,

soul, and body (except, of course my arse hole).36

Dmitri’s lewd and ambiguous manner often blurred the divide

between familial jesting and the dangerously erotic. While this might be par for the course with his cousin the tsar, even a diluted form

of it might have been rather too near the knuckle for his unworldly

female cousins. As late as 1911 Dmitri still referred to the girls

collectively as children, at a time when rumours were gathering in

the foreign press of an imminent engagement between himself and

Olga. But there is no solid evidence to support any interest in Dmitri on Olga’s part; in fact rather the opposite, she appears to have found his blokeish behaviour with her father – the badinage and endless

billiard playing – rather immature. And for someone as sexually

experienced as Dmitri, who already was demonstrating an interest

in strong-minded, older and often married women, Olga Nikolaevna

would have seemed a total innocent, if not, as has been suggested,

‘a wet blanket’.37

In 1908 Nicholas had banned Dmitri, so Dmitri told his sister

Maria, from going out riding alone with Olga ‘because of what had

happened the first time’, probably an allusion to his mischievous

behaviour and penchant for telling dirty jokes.38 Yet to all intents

and purposes it had seemed by 1911 that he was being groomed as

a prospective husband for her. Certainly the signs were sufficient

for the foreign press to pick up on the gossip in St Petersburg and

run away with it. But in fact the possibility of an engagement was

already being anticipated much closer to home – within the imperial

household itself – as General Spiridovich confirmed in his memoirs.

Everyone enjoyed Dmitri’s presence, for he livened up the rather

dull atmosphere at court. ‘The grand duke came often without

171

693GG_TXT.indd 171

29/10/2013 16:17

FOUR SISTERS

ceremony, after merely announcing his arrival over the phone to

the emperor. Such was the emperor’s affection for him that all the

entourage already saw in him the future fiancé of one of the grand

duchesses.’39

Although he had not excelled as officer material, at cavalry school

Dmitri had proved himself to be an excellent horseman and in early

June 1912 he returned to St Petersburg to take up serious training

for the Russian equestrian team at the Stockholm Olympics to be

held in July. At this point serious rumours began circulating of an

engagement, for in her diary for 7 June, General Bogdanov’s wife

Alexandra – who held a monarchist political salon in St Petersburg

– noted that ‘Yesterday Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna was

betrothed to Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich’.40 The foreign press

pounced on the rumours: the Dmitri–Olga ‘romance’ was repeated

in the
Washington Post
in July, under the fanciful headline ‘Cupid by the Thrones’, where it was asserted that Olga had turned down

an approach from Prince Adalbert, third son of the Kaiser, because

‘she had given her heart to her cousin Grand Duke Dmitri Paulovitch

[
sic
]’. What is more, the paper said, she and Dmitri had ‘spoken of their affection’ and Olga ‘wore hidden a diamond pendant as a

remembrance of these words’.41

The absence of any official announcement and the lack of clarity

even among those in the imperial entourage were compounded by

a sphinx-like remark from British ambassador’s daughter Meriel

Buchanan, a great friend of Dmitri Pavlovich, in her diary in August, which appears to be a response to the betrothal rumour:

I heard a rumour yesterday that a certain person is going to

marry the Emperor’s eldest daughter. I can’t quite believe it

considering all the high and mighty people who are panting to

marry her. Of course she may have a coup de foudre for him

and insist on having her own way.42

Whether or not the rumours were true, a possible marriage

between Grand Duke Dmitri and Olga soon became problematic.

By the autumn of 1912 he had fallen increasingly under the influ-

ence of a boyhood friend, Prince Felix Yusupov, and had rapidly