The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra(11)

But in Russia at the time, beyond Nicholas’s two younger brothers Georgiy and Mikhail – who would be next in line – there were several more grand dukes with sons aplenty.

While eagerly awaiting the birth of her child, Alexandra set about creating something no Russian empress before her had ever attempted: an intimate family home for herself, Nicky and the children to come. They both loved the Alexander Palace out at Tsarksoe Selo, preferring its location well away from inquisitive St Petersburg society. ‘The quiet here is so delightful,’ she told Ernie, ‘one feels quite another creature, than when in town.’10 She and Nicholas chose not to take over Alexander III’s family apartments in the east wing, but instead the somewhat neglected and sparsely furnished west wing closer to the palace gates. The interior was to be neither imperial in style nor in any way grandiose but renovated to Alexandra’s own simple provincial tastes, the perfect environment in which she anticipated living the life of a devoted hausfrau and mother. Simple modern furniture like that familiar from her 28

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childhood in Darmstadt was ordered from Maples, the London-based furniture manufacturer and retailer, which sent out orders from its Tottenham Court Road store. The ambience of this intentionally family-oriented home, in which Nicholas and Alexandra would spend the majority of their time – aside from the obligatory winter season in St Petersburg from Christmas to Lent – was to be cosily Victorian, as Grandmama would have liked it. St Petersburg society was of course duly horrified at the new tsaritsa’s bourgeoise tastes, for she had commissioned the Russian interior designer, Roman Meltzer, to refurbish the rooms in the Jugendstil or art nouveau style then popular in Germany, rather than in a style to match the palace’s Russian location and its classical exterior.

The heat was intolerable that summer of 1895 and as her pregnancy progressed and with it her discomfort, Alexandra was glad to escape to the sea breezes of the Lower Dacha at Peterhof, located in the Alexandria Park, one of six English-style landscaped parks on the Peterhof estate. The Lower Dacha inhabited a world entirely its own, located well out of sight of the golden cupolas of Peter the Great’s grand palace and its cascading fountains and ornamental gardens, a charming, unobtrusive building of red and cream brick-work laid in alternating, horizontal stripes. Between 1883 and 1885

Alexander III had had it enlarged from a two-storey turreted struc-ture into a four-storey Italianate pavilion with balconies and glazed verandas. But it was still rather high and narrow with smallish rooms and low ceilings, giving it more the feel of a seaside villa than an imperial residence. The location, however, was idyllic – tucked away at the far north-east corner of the park behind a grove of shady pine and deciduous trees and in sight of the boulder-strewn shore-line of the Gulf of Finland. The park itself, where the wild flowers grew in profusion and which was full of rabbits and hares, was surrounded by 7-foot-high (2-m-high) railings, with a soldier with fixed bayonet posted every 100 yards (every 90 m) and Cossacks of the Tsar’s Escort – Nicholas’s personal bodyguard who went with him everywhere – patrolling on horseback inside the grounds.11 The Lower Dacha itself was encircled by a lawn and a flower garden of lilies, hollyhocks, poppies and sweet peas. It reminded Alexandra of the lovely gardens at Wolfsgarten, Ernie’s hunting lodge in the heart 29

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FOUR SISTERS

of the Hessian forest, and she felt safe and at home here. Anticipating the need for more rooms, Nicholas ordered an additional wing to be constructed. The interior would remain much as the couple’s new apartments at Tsarskoe Selo, only more modest in scale, with plain and mainly white furniture and the familiar chintz draperies, and everywhere, as always, Alexandra’s trademark: ‘tables, brackets, and furniture . . . laden with jars, vases, and bowls filled with fresh-cut, sweet-smelling flowers’.12

She spent the months of June to September in absolute seclusion at Peterhof. Her pregnancy was exhausting and the baby was very active. As she told Ernie in July, ‘My tiny one hops like mad some-times, and makes me feel quite giddy, and gives me stiches [ sic]

(downstairs) when I walk.’13* She spent much of her time resting on a couch in sight of the sea, or taking gentle daily walks and drives with Nicky, in between drawing, painting and making quilts and baby clothes. ‘What a joy it must be to have a sweet little wee child of one’s own’, she wrote in July to Ernie, who now had a baby daughter Elisabeth. ‘I am longing for the moment when God will give us ours – it will be such a happiness for my darling Nicky too . . . he has so many sorrows and worries that the appearance of a tiny Baby of his very own will cheer him up. . . . So young, and in such a responsible position and so many things to fight against.’14

At the end of August the apartments at Tsarskoe Selo were ready for use. Despite its modest size, the palace and its 14 miles (22.5

km) of parkland would need a 1,000-strong staff of servants and court officials to run it and a much larger military garrison to guard it.15 Alexandra loved her new rooms and was busy organizing her layette, although suffering a lot of discomfort. ‘I do hope I shall not have to wait much longer – the weight and movements get so strong’, she told Ernie.16 At the end of September she experienced a bout of acute pain in her abdomen. Madame Günst was sent for and immediately called in Dr Dmitri Ott – director of the St Petersburg Institute of Midwifery and the most influential gynaecologist in * Alexandra’s spelling was extremely idiosyncratic and her erratic grammar simply the result of writing in haste. All instances of misspelling and bad grammar in quotations from her letters and diaries are therefore sic.