Figure 1.--The Grand Duchess Marie and her brother the Grand Duke Dmitri, still in a dress, are pictured here. Dmiti is being held by his English nanny. "Aunt Ella" sits to the left and the Grand Duke Serge has his back to the camera. Marie says the nannies ruled the nursery and that she and her brother grew up speaking English..

Introduction: The Grand Duchess Marie described nursery life for her and her younger brother Dmitri during the late 1890s. Their father was Grand Duke Paul, brother of Tsar Alexander III, the father of the last Tsar, Nicholas II. These details are from Marie's autobiography, Education of a Princess:

My brother came into the world so small, so feeble, that no one thought he could live. His arrival went almost unnoticed amid the grief and disorder aroused-by my mother's desperate condition. My old English nurse has told me of having found the new born child bundled haphazardly among some blankets on a chair, as she came running to get news of my mother. It was only after my mother was dead that they began to pay attention to Dmitri.

At that time baby incubators were rare; they wrapped him in cotton-wool and kept him in a cradle heated with hot-water bottles. Uncle Serge, with his own hands, gave him the bouillon baths that the doctors prescribed, and the child gained in strength and began to grow.

He and I were left at Ilinskoie for several months, until he was judged strong enough to travel; we were then returned to our home in St. Petersburg, where our father awaited us.

All of this was, of course, in a past beyond my conscious. recollection, and has been told me by other people. Of my own memories, the first', I am certain, goes back to a day in my fourth year when, standing on the seat of a black leather armchair, I was having my picture taken. I recall how the starched pleats of my little white dress scratched my arm and how the silk of my sash creaked. My head was of just the same height as the back of the chair on which the photographer had placed me; my feet, clad in pumps with silken pompons, rested on a leopards skin.

We lived,, Dmitri and I, in St. Petersburg with our father, in a palace on the Neva. Qur palace was vast and rectangular, of no definite style or period, its diverse groups and wings drawn together around a spacious inner court. The front window of the second floor or opened to a sweeping view -of the Vide river, in summer alive with ships.

Dmitri and I lived with our nurses and attendants in a series of rooms on the second floor. This nursery suite, the domain of our infancy, was entirely isolated from the rest of the palace. It was a little world of its own, a world ruled by our English nurse, Nannie Fry, and her assistant, Lizzie Grove.

Nannie Fry and Lizzie Grove had brought to Russia all the habits of their native country; they ruled the nursery according to their own ideas and principles, and enjoyed an absolute sovereignty not only over my brother and me but over an innumerable retinue of Russian chambermaids, valets, and assistant nurses.

Until I was 6 years old I spoke hardly a word of Russian. The immediate household and all of the family spoke English to us.

Father used to come upstairs twice a day to see us. His love for us was deep and fond, and we knew it, but he never displayed towards us a spontaneous tenderness, embracing us only when bidding us good-morning or good-night.

I adored him. Every moment that I could be with him was joyous and, if for any reason a day passed without our seeing him, it was a real disappointment.

He commanded at this time the Imperial Horse Guards. I recall him most distinctly in the dress uniform of that regiment. It was a truly magnificent uniform-all of white with gold braid. The gilded helmet was surmounted by the imperial eagle.

My father was tall and thin with wide shoulders. His head was small; his rounded forehead a little pinched at the temples. For so large a man his feet were remarkably small and his hands were of a beauty and delicacy that I have never since discovered in the hands of a human being.

He was uniquely charming. Every word, movement, gesture, bore the imprint of distinction. No one could approach him without feeling drawn to him; and this remained always true, for age could not dim his elegance, banish his gaiety, or embitter the goodness of his heart. His humour ran sometimes to fantastic, enchanting lies which he maintained to the uttermost. He. deftly slipped under our pet hare one Easter, for instance, an ordinary hen's egg and succeeded in making us believe that our tame hare had laid the egg.

At Christmas he was particularly joyous, and Christmas was the peak of our year. Days before, the trees would be brought out and set up. Then the doors of the great reception hall would be closed; then mysterious preparations, half sensed, would go forward all around us; then, and only then throughout all our year, would the brooding calm of that great palace be driven away and replaced by a delicious and joyous agitation.

As Christmas Eve approached our excitement became so intense that it required all the vigilance of our nurses to keep Dmitri and me from stealing a look behind those closed doors. To calm us they would take us driving, but Christmas lights and decorations and the gay holiday spirit of the crowds that thronged around our carriage in the streets only excited us the more.

Finally the great moment came. When we were dressed father came for us. He led us to the doors of the closed reception hall and made a sign. The electric lights within the large room were snapped off, the doors thrown open. Before our enchanted eyes appeared, in that immense dark room, the magic trees, ablaze with candles. Our hearts stopped beating, and tremblingly we entered after our father. He made another sign; darkness vanished; along the walls appeared tables covered with white cloths and on these tables were the gifts.

Our first glance at those tables, our first confused, rapturous attempt to see everything at once-no joy that I have experienced in all the years since can be compared to that!

After we had been permitted timidly to approach, greedily, rapturously, to examine our treasures, it became the turn of the others of the household to receive gifts. Those of my father's court who lived at the palace, his aides-de-camp, the chamberlain and his wife, our nurses, an all -came forward now for their Christmas presents, heaped on separate tables and marked by name.

Father had a gift table of his own, and that table bore weirdest collection of love offerings imaginable. For months Dmitri and I had been occupied with needlework creating with immense pains and incredibly bad taste such works of art cushions, pen-wipers, clippers, and book covers to bestow unto him.

When we became a little older he besought us, for his sake to give up needlework; thereafter we saved and bought in shops with great excitement such other useless and frightful objects as could not, for sentiment, be thrown away and so were doomed to accumulate, useless and hideous, year upon year in the darkness of wardrobes.

When the candles on the trees had lived out their brief life, that was the time ordained for my father to set off the fireworks in which he always took a great delight and interest. Once exploded a fire-cracker so close to my legs that it set my dress afire. The flame was quickly put out but I was terribly frightened.

In the evening, worn by the day's emotions but ended happy, we would be put to bed taking with us our chosen t of the day's treasure. Only one thing would sadden me. Later in the evening, every Christmas Eve, after our fete, father wou leave us to pass the remaining days of the holiday with Uncle Serge and Aunt Ella at Moscow. His absence left in my hearta void that even the most beautiful of my presents could.

Note: It interesting to note how un-Russian the Romanovs were. They probably spoke French or English more frequently than Russian. Much of the aristocracy looked down at their own countrymen and culture. One can't help but wonder how different Russian history in the early part of this century might have been if Paul or Michael, instead of Nicholas had been Tsar. Some background as well as images of Marie and Dmitri as well as other Russian royals are available on the HBC satellite royalty web site.

Last updated: June 28, 1998
Last updated: June 28, 1998