The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) by Helen Rappaport

something no Russian empress before her had ever
    attempted: an intimate family home for herself, Nicky and the chil-
    dren 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
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    LA PETITE DUCHESSE
    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 preg-
    nancy 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