The Grand Duchess of Nowhere

by Laurie Graham

  He was fond of Nicky. He still regarded him as a boy, I suppose, and would have been very willing to offer him a guiding hand. But Nicky had decided that he didn’t need guidance, only blind obedience. And the thing above all that drove Uncle Vladimir to distraction was the policy-making that apparently went on in Sunny’s boudoir.

  *

  I hate telegrams. In my whole life I only ever received one that brought good news. I’ll tell you about it. I was expecting Kira and getting quite near my time, so it must have been early in 1909. Cyril could tell you to the very minute. The wire was from Miechen. Just one sentence. All it said was, TA FEMME EST MAINTENANT DUCHESSE.

  Cyril came running to find me.

  ‘Nicky’s relented,’ he kept saying. ‘We’re on our way back, Ducky!’

  Which wasn’t quite true, but it was the first step. Emperor Nicky had been to visit Uncle Vladimir on his sickbed and been shocked by what he’d found.

  ‘Shaken to the core,’ Miechen said. ‘It suddenly hit him that my Vladik’s dying. Too late now to ask for his counsel. Nicky sat there weeping. Well I’m sorry but I don’t care to see an Emperor blubbing. He said he’d never wished to quarrel with Vladimir and perhaps things had been blown out of proportion. Out of proportion! And then he asked me what he could do, to make amends, so I told him. Blow your nose and restore Cyril’s title. And he did. Sunny won’t like it, of course, but who cares about her. That title should never have been taken away. Now we must make him recall you to Russia and put an end to this nonsense.’

  The next telegram was a more typical specimen of the beast. Uncle Vladimir was dead. Cyril was permitted to go to St Petersburg for the funeral. Given my condition we didn’t press for me to be allowed to go with him.

  Miechen said, ‘Stay home and rest, Ducky. We don’t want you giving birth in some Polish railway siding. Time enough later for your grand entrance. When you do come we’ll make a great fanfaronade of it and put Empress Sunny into an absolute fury. And have you heard the latest about Misha?’

  Emperor Nicky’s brother, Grand Duke Michael, had declined to behave like an Imperial heir. He’d refused to give up Natalya Wulfert, and even in the grief of her widowing Miechen was scheming.

  She said, ‘Nicky’s had Misha sent to some God-forsaken posting, to try and keep him out of Mrs Wulfert’s bed, but needless to say Misha’s still going to Moscow to see her, every minute he can get away, and the husband is making the most enormous fuss, talking about a duel, threatening to take poison. No dignity at all. So this can only end badly, for Misha, I mean. Either Wulfert will demand satisfaction and put a bullet in him, or Emperor Nicky will banish him. You heard it from me. And in either case that will put Cyril next in line, if the worst should befall the Tsesarevich. I wish no one ill, of course. We all hope Alyosha will thrive. I’m merely pointing out how close you and Cyril have now drawn to the throne.’

  15

  So my husband had his title again. Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich – though to be honest, in Paris he had never stopped using it – and then he was given a job, as a Captain Lieutenant in the Baltic Fleet. It was good to think of him being occupied again. Golf is all well and good but on rainy days he was rather under my feet. But the Navy? I dreaded his going back to sea. I was the only person who knew how shattered his nerves still were.

  Even pootling around on Tegernsee on our honeymoon I could see the water made him anxious. He still had his drowning nightmare. I’d hear him let out a strangled cry and see his arms reaching up and I’d have to wake him.

  The problem was, I couldn’t go to Russia, to at least be there at Kronstadt when he had shore leave. Emperor Nicky wasn’t willing to restore all Cyril’s privileges at once and my residence in Russia was the very last concession he made. I saw Sunny’s hand in that. Though Ernie was settled with his new wife and was himself perfectly civil with me, friendly even, Sunny has never forgiven my divorcing him. She has a resentful streak in her character. Well, perhaps her present misfortunes have softened her.

  Ernie and Onor had another son. I got the usual scrawl from Ernie. An heir and one to spare, he wrote, so all’s well in Hesse. He’s a dear little fellow. We’ve called him Louis. Somewhat envious of your Parisian exile however.

  I found I minded the arrival of Ernie’s second son much more than his first. I knew it didn’t necessarily signify that Onor’s bedroom charms were greater than mine. More likely that Ernie’s sense of urgency and duty to Hesse had grown stronger. But still I imagined all of Darmstadt saying, ‘Two sons! Nothing wrong with Grand Duke Ernie. That first wife of his, what was her problem?’

  Cyril was at sea and I was in Paris with a two-year-old and a new baby. Kira was born on 26th April 1909. Cyril said he didn’t at all mind that we had another girl but I think he did, just a bit.

  ‘And later on,’ he’d say, ‘when things are more settled, who knows? Perhaps we’ll have another.’

  When things are more settled. I wonder when that will be.

  I went to Coburg that summer to see Baby Bee married to Alfonso. He was a rather dashing aviator who had quite taken Bee’s mind off Grand Duke Misha, but he was also an Infante of the house of Orlean y Borbon and a Catholic which meant Baby Bee was supposed to convert. She didn’t. She has now, but there was a fearful fuss at the time and Alfonso was stripped of his rank for a while. Bee didn’t care. She was in love. But Mother cared very much.

  ‘What is it about my daughters?’ she said. ‘Why must there always be complications?’

  I said, ‘Sandra hasn’t had complications.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘And thank goodness. It’s disappointing enough that she only married a Hohenlohe.’

  The final barrier to my settling in Russia was lowered just before Kira’s first birthday. Emperor Nicky offered Cyril the use of a house at Tsarskoe Selo, ‘if your wife cares to join you there’. I saw the letter. Nicky, who was a cousin, whichever way you cut it, and who had known me forever, couldn’t quite bring himself to name me. If your wife cares to join you.

  Mother said I mustn’t appear too eager. She hated the idea that Nicky and Sunny had dominion over me and she was certain that if I went to St Petersburg, Sunny would never receive me, but I didn’t care. I began packing at once. I wanted to be with Cyril and I wanted to be in Russia. Actually I’d wanted to be in Russia for as long as I could remember. I called at Coburg on my way. Baby Bee was there, expecting her honeymoon baby. She had a boy, Alvaro. My baby sister was a mother!

  She said, ‘You might have warned me.’

  I said, ‘What? About Married Life?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘About childbirth.’

  As soon as she was safely delivered I continued my journey to be with Cyril.

  ‘Heaven knows when I shall see you again,’ Mother said.

  I said, ‘But you’ll visit. St Petersburg hasn’t suddenly moved further away.’

  ‘Yes, it has,’ she said. ‘That’s what happens when you grow old.’

  She’d just received the news that Uncle King Bertie had died.

  ‘Another one gone,’ she said. ‘I’ll soon be the last one standing.’

  May was the loveliest time to arrive at Tsarskoe Selo. The lindens were in flower and the lilacs and the bird cherry and the air was still fresh. The house we’d been allocated was on Sadovaya Street, close to the manège, which rather pleased me, and to the horse cemetery, which fascinated Masha.

  Miechen’s little summer palace-ette was close by and so was brother-in-law Boris’s rather over-rusticated cottage, but our nearest neighbour was Genya Botkin. He was physician to the Emperor’s family, to all of them except the Tsesarevich. Alyosha has his own doctor, because of his particular condition, a Dr Derevenko who is reckoned to be an expert in the treatment of the bleeding disease. And of course in those days they had Sunny’s monk in attendance too. Grigory Rasputin. I never heard Dr Botkin express any opinion of Rasputin. I imagine he might have been relieved that the responsibility for Alyosha’s healt
h and survival was someone else’s. As it was, the poor man never had a minute to call his own, with Empress Sunny sending for him every time she had the slightest twinge.

  Cyril always said Genya Botkin must have been resigned to his fate from the day he was born. His father had been physician to two Emperors so Botkin knew what was expected of him: to attend the Imperial Family every day, at whatever hour, and to agree politely with the Empress’s own diagnoses. His life was not his own. Whether this had been the cause of Mrs Botkin’s discontent I do not know. By the time we came to Sadovaya Street she’d run off with some penniless professor and left Botkin with four children to raise. Tanya is the eldest. I’m sure she’d be married by now if it weren’t for this damned war. Gleb is the baby of the family and in between came Mitya and Yuri, both dear, lovely boys. Masha still asks about them. I haven’t told her yet that they won’t be coming home. For one thing it would rather raise the question, where is home now?

  But Cyril was right, Genya Botkin is the consummate Court physician. I never heard him gossip or complain. When Nicky and Sunny go into exile I’m sure he’ll go with them, to the ends of the earth.

  The house on Sadovaya wasn’t grand, but it was spacious enough for our needs and full of light. I liked it at once. There were no rugs and only one armoire but Cyril had prepared something of a welcome surprise. He’d bought a Don mare for me, a chestnut, fifteen hands, and a Shetland pony for Masha.

  Miechen sent me an army of cleaners, followed by several wagon loads of furniture, some from the Vladimir Palace and some she’d borrowed on our behalf from the Bachelor Uncles.

  ‘Not bad pieces but nothing special,’ she said. ‘Men know nothing about furniture. But the Uncles have more than they need. When do they ever give parties? So you may as well have the benefit, for the time being. We can’t have you living like gypsies. And as soon as you have a moment, there’s a town house I’d like you to look at. It’s not perfect but you must have somewhere, at least for your first Season.’

  That house in St Petersburg was on Glinka Street, something of a bargain for a quick sale and, though Miechen thought of it as a temporary arrangement until we found something grander, we never did move on. At least, not until now.

  We summered at Tsarskoe Selo. It was the most heavenly time. Cyril had a desk job. He came home almost every evening. We were a family, and we were in Russia, where we belonged. Emperor Nicky and Sunny were out at Tsarskoe Selo too, in residence at the Alexander Palace, but the weeks went by and I didn’t see anything of them except their children, occasionally, out walking. I call them children but Olga wasn’t a child by then. She was fifteen and starting to look like a young woman. Tatiana was thirteen, Masha, their Masha, was eleven, Anastasia was nine. They’d wave to us but never stop to speak. Alexis was rarely with them and when we did see him he’d be in the arms of one of his boatman-nurses, though he was fully five years old by then. Masha, our Masha, used to ask me, ‘Why is that boy carried about like a baby?’

  Tsesarevich Alexis was small for his age, but he looked well enough. That’s the thing about the bleeding disease. It does its damage in hidden places. I’ve heard people call it a family curse but surely every family has its troubles. Ernie and I lost Elli. Mother lost our Affie. Grandma Queen buried three of her children. There’s no particular reason the Emperor of All the Russias should be exempt.

  We may have been living with borrowed chairs at Sadovaya Street but we had one great amenity: a telephone. I thought I should never get used to it and now I wonder how I ever managed without it. Miechen used to call me every day to see whether I’d been summoned yet by Sunny. She was longing for me to report back on Sunny’s décor.

  ‘From what I hear,’ she said, ‘she went through the Maples catalogue and ordered one of everything in chintz. For the Alexander Palace! The woman has no idea. She should have married some minor English Duke and gone to live in, where is it, Surreyshire? That’s the place for chintz.’

  It was a long, long time before I got to see whether Miechen was right about Sunny’s crimes against Imperial elegance. No invitation arrived.

  Miechen said, ‘Never mind, darling. People say her teas are very poor affairs. Just bread and butter and a McVitie’s Digestive if you’re lucky.’

  I did see Sunny, on the rare occasions she attended a gala or a sale of work. She was polite, always asked after Mother and my girls and I would reciprocate. But one wasn’t to ask about Alyosha’s health. I’d been warned of that. As though to ask if he were well was to suggest that he wasn’t. The Tsesarevich’s disease was a State secret that everyone knew about, but there was to be no idle speculation about the succession.

  It must have cost Sunny a great effort to be pleasant to me in company. I knew what she really thought of me because a well-wisher once kindly passed on what she’s heard from the Empress’s lips.

  ‘People like that will be the ruin of this family.’

  ‘People like that’ were women like me and Uncle Paul’s Olga. Sirens who cast off unsatisfactory husbands like last year’s neckline and seduced helpless Romanov men. And we weren’t even the worst. Mathilde Kschessinskaya, ‘that creature’ as Mother always called her, occupied that position, unchallenged. Blatantly unmarried and parading her son around like a trophy. Who was the boy’s father? Mother reckoned it was impossible to guess given Kschessinskaya’s career, passed around the Romanov men like a plate of sugar biscuits. The field of possible fathers was a large and illustrious one.

  That summer more fuel was thrown on the fires of Sunny’s displeasure. Grand Duke Misha’s sweetheart, Natalya Wulfert, gave birth to a baby boy. As Miechen said, it was going to be interesting to see how Emperor Nicky dealt with that. In the case of an unsuitable lover there’s always the possibility that they can be silenced with a house and a pension, but a baby isn’t so easily bought off. Not when the identity of his father is public knowledge. For one thing the child requires a name.

  Miechen said, ‘If our dear Emperor were to ask my advice, I’d suggest he let Paul come home and send Misha into exile. That would be a sensible exchange, don’t you think? I’m sure Mrs Wulfert would love Paris. If it turns out a new heir is required,’ Miechen lowered her powerful voice at this point, ‘I mean if Sunny’s holy man can’t save Alyosha, they can always rely on Cyril for the succession. You know you’d make a much better Empress than Sunny.’

  Miechen had everything worked out. But of course Emperor Nicky didn’t ask for her advice. Instead he used a handy Imperial privilege and arranged for Natalya Wulfert’s divorce to be backdated and then decreed that the former Mrs Wulfert should in future style herself Countess Brasova. That was his nod towards Grand Duke Michael’s part in all this. Brasovo was one of Misha’s estates, south of Moscow, miles from anywhere.

  Perhaps Nicky thought a title would persuade Countess Brasova to stay quietly in the country, making jam. If so he quite misjudged the matter. Grand Duke Misha had no intention of giving up Natalya and his baby son or hiding them away and Natalya had no intention of being hidden. Misha brought them with him to St Petersburg and his only concession to protocol was to live out of town, in Gatchina. He perched in his official bachelor quarters at the Gatchina Palace and Natalya and the baby lived in a rented villa just down the road.

  Miechen said, ‘Misha will marry her, just see if he doesn’t. One of these days he’ll slip his leash.’

  Cyril said, ‘But they’ll never find an Orthodox priest willing to do it. Look at the difficulty we had. Ducky’s mother practically had to hold the poor man at gunpoint to get him to marry us and he was her tame chaplain.’

  Miechen said, ‘Then Misha will go abroad to do it, and he won’t worry about the flavour of the priest. He’ll go to France. Any mayor will marry you there. I’m telling you, Misha’s determined.’

  She was right, as has sometimes been the case, but it took a while. The Emperor’s brother, you see, can’t just jump aboard a train. He’s required to say where he wishes to go and then
ask if he may. Grand Duke Misha told Cyril he believed he was being followed, by disguised policemen. Cyril thought it might be true.

  ‘Look at the situation,’ he said. ‘The Tsesarevich isn’t strong. Misha’s boy may have been born the wrong side of the blanket but he’s healthy. The last thing Nicky wants is for Misha to marry Brasova. It would be a step towards regularising their child’s standing. Sunny will be nagging him about it, you can be sure. Anything to keep Misha’s boy out of the succession. If I were the Countess Brasova I’d watch my back and my child.’

  I was never sure how much to believe in the lengths Nicky might go to to keep Sunny happy. For all the years I’d known him Emperor Nicky was a mystery to me. He still is. A little man in a big man’s boots. I could feel sorry for him. With a different roll of the dice, he’d have made a perfectly happy farmer. It’s harder to summon up sympathy for Sunny. She may be frail and worn out and frantic for the health of her son but there’s something at the heart of her that’s as hard as flint.

  Though Sunny hardly ever came into society she did have her own little circle, her Ladies. Anna Vyrubova, Nastinka Hendrikova, Isa Buxhoeveden. Sunny went nowhere without them. Vyrubova was her particular favourite. Practically like a sister, Miechen said.

  ‘A sister, with slow glands. A devoted little heifer, mooing along in Sunny’s shadow.’

  St Petersburg wasn’t like Darmstadt, where everyone dined politely with everyone else, whatever their real opinions of each other, and it wasn’t like Paris, where everything was free and easy and no one dined with anyone unless they really wanted to. In St Petersburg there were social obligations but there were also undisguised opinions and factions and I had married into the faction that was the most feared and admired. Miechen’s set were ruthless. If you didn’t glitter, if you didn’t dress fabulously and give wonderful parties you didn’t belong. We were the Vladimirovichi and we outshone Empress Sunny’s drab little coterie without even trying. It didn’t come naturally to me. I hate changing my clothes three times a day. But I was finding my feet in St Petersburg and Miechen was not to be let down.