The Diary of Olga Romanov (3 page)

As Olga grew into a toddler in 1897, she became the big sister to another imperial daughter, Tatiana. Later in her
diaries Olga would refer to herself and her sister Tatiana as “We 2.” The two girls were very close in age and did most activities together, and were often dressed in matching outfits.

In 1898, the growing family finally moved away from the Anichkov Palace in St. Petersburg, where they resided with Olga's grandmother, the dowager empress. They made the relatively intimate Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo (literally “Imperial Village,” a St. Petersburg suburb) their permanent home. In another year, Olga was joined by yet another baby sister, Maria.

In 1901, just before Olga and her family went on holiday to Peterhof, a seaside town on the Gulf of Finland founded by Peter the Great, she came down with typhoid fever. This was the same disease that killed Olga's great-grandfather Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort. The six-year-old grand duchess, seriously ill for five long, weary weeks, was nursed by her mother and her governess, Margaret Eagar. For a while it seemed that Olga might not recover, but she did. Olga was still in bed when her youngest sister, Anastasia, was born. Olga was disappointed at not being able to attend the new baby's baptism, which would have been her first “official” ceremony.

As the young imperial family kept expanding, Olga's parents did their best to provide “normal” lives for their daughters. Just like any Russian family they celebrated Orthodox holidays such as Christmas by exchanging gifts and decorating a fir tree. Eagar, who had been the girls' governess since 1898, remembered in her memoirs one particular Christmas when the young grand duchesses were delighted to see their mother gorgeously attired for a ceremony. They circled around her in speechless admiration when suddenly Olga clapped her hands, and exclaimed fervently, “Oh! Mama, you are just like a lovely Christmas tree!”

The children made Christmas and birthday presents for their parents with their own hands, generally needlework. One Christmas, despite Eagar's attempts to convince her otherwise, Olga insisted on making a kettle-holder for her father. It had a picture of a little kettle singing on a fire, which she embroidered a blue frame around, and the little girl was very happy with her accomplishment. When Christmas came, she presented it to her father, saying, “Nanny was afraid that it wasn't going to be much use to you because it's a kettle-holder, but you can put it on your table and use it as a place mat, or hang it on the wall for a picture. Just see the pretty little frame around it.”

From the many intimate anecdotes of her governess, we get a glimpse of Olga's mentality as a little girl. Especially revealing is Olga's attitude about her status as the oldest imperial sibling. The little grand duchess was always profoundly interested in biblical stories, like the one of Joseph and his brothers. After Eagar pronounced how terrible it was for the brothers to be so jealous and so cruel to their youngest sibling, Olga responded, “Joseph was not the eldest, and the beautiful coat should have been given to the eldest son; the other brothers knew that, and perhaps that was why they put him in the pit.” All explanations were useless—Olga's sympathies lay with Joseph's eldest brother, Reuben.

A similar incident occurred when a cinematograph was played for the children and some friends. The film showed two little girls playing in a garden, when the older one attempted to snatch a toy from the younger one, who refused to give it up. Foiled in her attempts, the elder girl seized a spoon and pounded the little one with it, which made the latter quickly relinquish the toy and begin to cry. Tatiana was upset and weeping to see the poor little girl so ill-treated, but Olga said, “I am sure that the toy belonged at first to the big
sister, and she was kind and lent it to her sister; then she wanted it back, and the little sister would not give it up, so she had to beat her.”

When
Alice in Wonderland
was first read to Olga, she was horrified at the manners of the queens. “No queens,” Olga said, “would ever be so rude.” From books and stories Olga was also able to learn about some things about the outside world that she had never experienced firsthand. When the
Alice in Wonderland
chapter about Alice's journey by railway was read to her, she was very amused that Alice did not have the train compartment all to herself. It was explained to her that each person had to buy a ticket and occupy just one seat in the train, with some tickets costing more than others and the highest-priced tickets granting a better place in the train. Still bemused, Olga asked, “When you travel, can anyone with the same kind of ticket you have get into the same carriage as you do?” No matter how normal her parents tried to make Olga's life, many mundane things that most people took for granted were completely foreign concepts to her.

In 1904, the long-awaited male heir to the Russian throne was born, bringing elation to the imperial family and the entire country. Hence, Olga finally got the chance to participate in her first grand ceremony at the baptism of her baby brother, Aleksei. But the little boy who was destined to become the next tsar of Russia was born with hemophilia, a rare and untreatable blood disorder. The baby boy's condition brought the tight-knit imperial family even closer together, but was also understandably a source of severe anxieties for Olga's parents. Desperation over Aleksei's hemophilia also contributed to the tsar and tsarina's dependence on the reputation of the charismatic Siberian peasant Grigori Rasputin as a faith healer—a factor of major historical significance. As for Olga, she loved her little brother unconditionally,
as did Aleksei's other sisters, and felt intensely protective of him.

Even as a child Olga tended to be the most reflective and analytical of her siblings. When she was eight years old, the war between Russia and Japan broke out in 1904. All the girls, even three-year-old Anastasia, worked hard at frame knitting, making scarves for the soldiers, and the two eldest girls also crocheted caps. One day Olga, diligently at work on her crocheting, suddenly said to Margaret Eagar, “I hope the Russian soldiers will kill all the Japanese; not leave even one alive.” When the governess explained that there were many innocent children and women in Japan, people who could not fight, Olga reflected for a moment. She then asked her if they also had an emperor in Japan, and hearing that they did, she continued to ask various other questions about Japan. After a pause, Olga finally said slowly, “I did not know that the [Japanese] were people like ourselves.” After that conversation, Olga never again said anything about being pleased to hear of the deaths of the Japanese.

When she started to read herself, one of Olga's favorite subjects was stories about medieval European history. According to Eagar, Olga once read a story about the execution of the Welsh Prince Llewellyn. The English beheaded him, sending his head to London, which made a great impression on the little girl. She was terribly shocked, and exclaimed, “It was a good thing he was dead before they cut off his head; it would have hurt him most awfully if he was alive.” The governess explained that they were not always so kind and usually cut the heads off living people, to which Olga replied, “I really think people are much better now than they used to be. I'm very glad I live now when people are so kind.”

According to her governess, Olga was taught by masters of music as well as Russian and mathematics. Once her arithmetic
master, who was a professor of algebra from one of the universities, assigned Olga to write something; she asked his permission to go see the Russian master, who was teaching Tatiana in the next room. When asked why she needed to see him, Olga told him that she wanted to ask him how to spell “arithmetic.” The math teacher then spelled this difficult word for her, to which she declared with great admiration, “How clever you are! And how hard you must have studied to be able not only to count so well but to spell such very long words!”

Pierre Gilliard, the grand duchesses' French tutor, described in his memoirs his first meeting with Olga: “The eldest of the Grand Duchesses, Olga, a girl of about ten, [was] very blonde, with eyes full of mischief, and a slightly retroussé little nose; [she] was studying me with an expression that seemed like an attempt to find my weakest point—however, from this child emanated such feeling of purity and sincerity that she immediately gained my sympathy.”

Olga was always described as the most intelligent and studious of the imperial siblings, but at the same time the most prone to self-analysis, even melancholy. Around the age of ten in 1905, Olga started recording her thoughts and daily activities in a personal diary in accordance with the imperial family tradition. She kept this diary until March 1917, around the time of her father's abdication from the Russian throne.

Due to her mother's frequent illnesses and dislike of public events, it often fell to Olga, as she grew older, to perform the duties that the tsar's consort would usually do. Of the imperial children, Olga was closest to her father, but she loved both her parents profoundly, as is evident from her diaries. Although she reportedly had occasional differences of opinion with her mother, Olga was fiercely defensive and
greatly sympathetic toward her, especially when it came to Alexandra's health.

Much like her father, Olga enjoyed taking long walks in the parks of Tsarskoe Selo. She often said that she would someday live in a small village because she liked nature so much more than the city. Olga also loved to sail on the imperial yacht
Standart
, and enjoyed the annual summer trips to the Black Sea in the Crimea, as well as other family holidays to Finland and Poland.

As Olga grew older, in addition to her love of nature and the outdoors, she became an even more voracious reader of books: the classics, the history of Russia and works detailing the lives of the peasants, ancient traditions, customs, laws, and geography of her nation. She had an extraordinary memory. According to Meriel Buchanan, she never forgot anything that she learned or had been told. Olga also loved music and was an excellent pianist.

Along with her siblings, Olga had keen interest in the lives and problems of others. It was she who once noticed a disabled girl in one of the keepers' cottages in the park at Tsarskoe Selo and insisted on becoming the child's “patron.” She made arrangements for the child to be transported to a hospital, and planned on paying for her care out of her own allowance. Of course, Olga had very little knowledge or idea of the value of money. Neither Olga nor any of her siblings ever bought their own clothes or anything else for themselves. The small allowances they received always went toward little presents to their parents or members of their household.

In her memoirs, Meriel Buchanan describes the physical appearance of the fifteen-year-old Olga at an imperial ball in 1910: “That evening…she wore a pale-pink chiffon dress of almost classical simplicity, a silver ribbon was bound
round her golden hair, which was parted in the middle, and her only jewels were a string of pearls round her slender neck. She had not the regular features, the almost mystical beauty of her sister, Tatiana Nikolaievna, but with her rather tip-tilted nose, her wide laughing mouth, her sparkling blue eyes, she had a charm, a freshness, an enchanting exuberance that made her irresistible.”

In November 1911 Olga turned sixteen, which was considered the coming of age for Russian aristocratic girls. Every young girl impatiently awaited this first “grown-up” ball, her coming out to the world. A grand dinner and gala party was taking place on that day at the palace in Livadia in the Crimea, to celebrate Olga's birthday.

Those who received the following invitation considered it a great honor: “Their Imperial Majesties invite [You] to dinner and a dancing party to be held on Thursday November 3rd, at 6:45 in the evening, at the Livadia Palace.” Dress for the occasion was strictly regulated: “Military cavaliers in frock coat with epaulets…. Civilians in evening dress with white tie.”

General Alexander Spiridovich, the Chief of Secret Personal Police in charge of protecting Nicholas II and his immediate family from 1905 until 1914, described the gala: “Dinner was served on small tables. Many candles, silver, flowers. At the round table in the center were seated Their Majesties, Grand Dukes Nicholas Nikolaevich, Pierre Nikolaevich, Alexander Mikhailovich, George Mikhailovich, with their wives, and the Minister of the Court. The star of the party, Olga Nikolaevna, in a pink dress, for the first time with her hair in a chignon, presided over the table. Her escort was N. P. Sablin. Still a young girl, very naïve, she often asked her escort what she should do…. All flushed in the face, charming in her pink dress, Olga Nikolaevna literally
beamed with joy at the great favor accorded to her regiment [the 9th Hussar regiment of Elizavetgrad, of which Olga was the chief]. They congratulated her and kissed her hand.”

Unlike her sister Maria, Olga did not often talk about wanting a husband and lots of children. However, it is evident from her diaries that she was a very romantic girl, who often idealized the young men she developed crushes on. During the winter of 1913–14, after Olga turned eighteen, several royal young men were considered as potential husbands for her. Among them were her cousin Grand Duke Dmitri; Prince Arthur of Connaught; the Duke of Leuchtenberg; and even briefly Edward, the Prince of Wales.

When the Crown Prince and Princess of Romania visited Russia, they brought along their eldest son Prince Karol, and everyone anxiously awaited the announcement of his and Olga's engagement. The Romanian royals stayed at Tsarskoe Selo for several days, but in the end nothing came of this venture. The grand duchess and the prince evidently were not romantically attracted. Olga mentioned this visit briefly in her diary, and the impression we get is disinterest at best.

The two respective royal families did not, however, completely give up on the idea of the marriage, and that summer Olga and her parents boarded the
Standart
and sailed to Constanta, Romania. Olga was too smart not to figure out the reason for this journey. She mentioned to Pierre Gilliard that she was aware that everyone was hoping for the Romanian engagement, but that her father had promised her that she would not be forced into a marriage that was distasteful to her.