Page "Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia" Paragraph 9

Tatiana and her older sister, Olga, were known in the household as " The Big Pair.

" According to a 29 May 1897 diary entry written by her father's distant cousin, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, she was given the name " Tatiana " as an homage to the heroine in Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse Eugene Onegin.

Her father liked the idea of having daughters named Olga and Tatiana, like the sisters in the famous poem.

Like their two younger sisters, the two older girls shared a bedroom and were very close to one another from early childhood.

In the spring of 1901, Olga had typhoid fever and was confined to the nursery for several weeks away from her younger sisters.

When she began to recover, Tatiana was permitted to see her older sister for five minutes but didn't recognize her.

When her governess, Margaretta Eagar, told her after the visit that the sickly child she had been conversing so gently with was Olga, four-year-old Tatiana began to cry bitterly and protested that the pale, thin child couldn't be her adored older sister.

Eagar had difficulty persuading Tatiana that Olga would recover.

French tutor Pierre Gilliard wrote that the two sisters were " passionately devoted to one another.