#imperial pets

[ohsoromanov]

Grand Duchess Olga’s cat Vaska

Tatiana's dog Ortipo and Olga's cat Vaska were the family's favorites and ran freely around the palace. Frequently, Ortipo and Vaska chased each other across sofas and tables, knocking down precious works of art along the way and scattering papers, which amused the imperial family very much. Occasional quarrels between Vaska and Ortipo also interrupted the sisters' sleep, but Tatiana could not be persuaded to send Ortipo to sleep with the other dogs living with the family. The pampered imperial pets simply couldn't wear ordinary leather collars. Both Vaska and Ortipo wore collars made by the imperial jeweler Faberge, which were inlaid with semi-precious stones.

"31 October, 1916. Tsarskoe Selo. My dear Papa Darling! Well it is again my turn to write to you… Forgive me that I'm writing so violently, but this quill scratches terribly and nothing comes out… We continue playing billiards a bit at our infirmary, sometimes it turns out well – and then I'm happy… Right now Olga's cat is running around here, I think he grew and is rather cute… Well now, my dear Papa! I send you and Aleksei a 1000 awfully big kisses, may God be with you. Your loving loyal and faithful Kaspiyetz [sic]."

From the book "Maria and Anastasia: The Youngest Romanov Grand Duchesses In Their Own Words: Letters, Diaries, Postcards" by Helen Azar.

[alexandminnie]

Imperial Pet Alert: Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna’s dog: EIRA

I finally stumbled upon a good picture of him (the few mentions of Eira I have read say that “he” was a male “Scotch Terrier” who adored his mistress, as she adored him) but liked to bite everybody else’s heels.

If you start looking carefully at some of Alexandra’s photos from this time period, you will be able to identify the unobtrusive ball of fur nearby. I have posted some of those here and there.

Here we see Eira in full possession of his mistress’ chair, apparently not bothered by the camera but obviously impatient to get the whole nonsensical exercise over.

[romanovsonelastdance]

Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich of Russia

Another delightful place to visit was the Grand Duke Vladimir’s big villa at Tsarskoe. The Grand Duchess was one of the most charming and certainly the most brilliant of the women in the Imperial Family, and one met there artists, musicians, and any interesting foreigners who happened to be visiting Russia. Her second son, the Grand Duke Boris, had a house of his own in the English style and I used to sneak off there and play poker whenever I could.  Boris was devoted to animals and he had an unusual pet, a huge tame pig known as Auguste, who was the pet of the household.  Auguste was lacking only in beauty; he had everything else, intelligence, personality and sweetness of disposition. He used to trot around after his master like a dog, beg for tidbits from the table and go through a whole repertoire of tricks.  - Prince Christopher of Greece, Memoirs

[naotmaa]

Was Jemmy Male or Female?

For those of you who don't know, Jemmy was Anastasia Nikolaevna's pet dog, and s/he was killed along with the family, and their corpse was thrown into the grave along with part of the Imperial Family and others. I've always wondered if Jemmy was a male or female dog (Usually I referred to it as a male dog, but I never knew for sure. I came across this post on the APTM forum, talking about the grammar that both Alexandra Fydorovna and Anastasia Nikolaevna used when writing about Jemmy, and how these tell us which gender Jemmy was.)

When writing about Jemmy in letters, Alexandra Fydorovna used the feminine forms of things. In a letter to Anna Vyrubova, on 8 December, 1917, she writes:

Ваша Jimmie лежитъ рядомъ пока ея хозяйка на роялѣ играетъ.

Which translates to:

Your [fem.] Jimmie is lying nearby while her mistress [Anastasia Nikolaevna] plays the piano.

However, Anastasia Nikolaevna speaks of Jemmy in the masculine form:

Джими здоровъ и веселъ.

Which translates to:

Jimmy is well [masc.] and in good spirits [masc.].

Olga Nikolaevna also talks of Jemmy in a masculine form:

Джими здороъ и довольно рамолен.

Which translates to:

Jimmy is well [masc.] and rather ga-ga [masc.].

I have two reasons to believe that Jemmy was a male

Alix's grasp of the Russian language

Olga and Anastasia's grasp of the Russian language

For the first reason, I believe that, since Alix didn't grow up with the Russian language, and didn't start to learn until her twenties, she would be influenced by the gender of the object's word, rather than the actual object. For those of you who don't understand, Russian (and other languages) nouns are classified by three genders, masculine, feminine, and neutral. One of the most well known examples of this is articles of the French language, le and la. The Russian word for dog (собака) is feminine, and she probably thought that using the other feminine forms of things would be okay (it totally was, if it was a female dog).

As for the second part, Olga and Anastasia were raised with Russian. They knew the language like the back of their hand, and would know how to inform someone of the dog's gender without saying it directly. The fact that they indirectly let on that the dog was male, makes me draw the conclusion that Jemmy was male.