The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) by Helen Rappaport Read Free Book Online Page B

– getting pregnant. Everyone was
    watching for the telltale signs. Grand Duke Konstantin
    Konstantinovich pointedly noted in his diary within weeks of the
    wedding that ‘the young Empress again felt faint in church. If this
    is for the reason the whole of Russia longs for, then praise be to
    God!’3 Sure enough, by the end of February Alexandra was confiding
    to Ernie (whose own wife was about to give birth to her first child
    in Darmstadt and to whom Alexandra was sending the imperial
    accoucheur Madame Günst to attend her): ‘I think now I can have hopes – a certain thing has stopped – and I think . . . Oh I cannot
    believe it, it would be too good and too great a happiness.’ She
    swore Ernie to secrecy; her sister Ella had ‘fidgeted in December
    already about it’ and her other sister Irene too, but she would tell
    them in her own time.4 As for her old nurse, whom she had brought
    with her from Darmstadt, ‘Orchie watches me the whole time in a
    tiresome way’. Within a week of this letter, Alexandra was ‘feeling
    daily so terribly sick’ that she could not attend the funeral service for the young Grand Duke Alexey Mikhailovich who had died of
    tuberculosis, and thereafter she was frequently confined to bed with
    violent nausea.5 Orchie coaxed her to have the occasional mutton
    chop, which more often than not would send her fleeing from the
    dining table to vomit. Alexandra was fearful that she was being
    watched for signs of her legendary poor health, and again begged
    Ernie not to tell anyone about how severe her morning sickness
    was.6 From now until her due date tsarist officialdom protected
    Alexandra’s health and welfare behind a wall of silence; there were
    no announcements or bulletins in the Russian press and the people
    at large knew nothing of her condition.
    For the time being the couple was still living at the Anichkov
    Palace in St Petersburg. Alexandra spent her days here resolutely
    hidden away from view in a ‘big armchair in a corner, half-hidden
    by the screen’, reading the Darmstadter Zeitung ,sewing and painting, while her adored husband dealt with his ‘aggravating people’. She
    resented Nicky’s absence on official business for even a couple of
    hours in the morning (echoes of her grandmother Victoria’s solipsism
    27
    693GG_TXT.indd 27
    29/10/2013 16:17
    FOUR SISTERS
    and inability to let her beloved Albert out of her sight). But she did have him to herself in the afternoons: ‘whilst he usually reads his
    heaps of papers from the ministers, I look through the begging
    letters, of which there are not [a] few & cut out the stamps’, the latter act a mark of her ingrained Hessian frugality.7 The business
    of state seemed an irritating diversion – ‘a horrid bore’.8 Evenings
    were spent listening to Nicky reading aloud, after which, while he
    decamped to his study for more paperwork, Alexandra would spin
    out the time playing the board game halma with her mother-in-law
    until Nicky returned for more bedtime reading. What few perfunc-
    tory duties Alexandra was obliged to fulfil – meeting foreign depu-
    tations or line-ups of ministers – were now made doubly unpleasant,
    for she was feeling dreadfully sick and suffering constant headaches.
    Nevertheless, the tsaritsa had every reason to be confident that
    she would produce the expected son before the year was out. The
    statistics certainly favoured it, there having been plenty of boys born to the previous three Romanov tsars. Male children were crucial in
    a country where the succession laws, changed in 1797 by Tsar Paul
    I, were based on male primogeniture.9 The Russian throne could
    pass to a woman only if all legal male lines of descent were extinct.
    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