Discussions about the Imperial Family and European Royalty > Tatiana Nicholaievna
Tatiana's French bulldog, Ortipo
Nick Nicholson:
I am pretty certain that the citations Katharina mentions refer to Ortino, and not to Jimmy or Joy. Jimmy and Joy were English Springer Spaniels, who are very hearty and medium-sized dogs of about 45-50 pounds when full grown. Ortino was a French Bulldog, and both males and females optimally weigh between 20-28 pounds.
I think that it is far more likely that Tatiana Nikolaevna was holding Ortino under her arm -- I would have a very hard time indeed holding a struggling 50 pound Springer Spaniel under my arm while dragging a valise through the mud. A 20-lb lap dog would be hard enough!
Nick
Penny_Wilson:
Greg and I tried to sort out these doggy logistics in The Fate of the Romanovs, and here's what we concluded:
Jemmy, Joy and Ortino departed Tsarskoye Selo with the family, and lived with them through the days in Tobolsk. After N, A and M left for Ekaterinburg, the three dogs remained with the rest of the children, and traveled to E'burg on board the Rus and by train with them. The family, including the three dogs, were reunited in the Ipatiev House. During captivity there, the dogs were fed on the upper balcony, just outside the dining room and what became Demidova's bedroom. After the murders and during the White investigations, the bones found on this balcony were itemized as remains of the dogs' last dinner in the house.
Various guards also recount stories of the girls, especially Anastasia, teaching the dogs tricks and making them perform in the garden.
After the murders, we know that Joy was taken from the Ipatiev House to Michael Letemin's house, where he was discovered in the garden by the Whites. Jemmy was obviously taken somewhere by someone most likely connected to the Bolsheviks, for the little dog was still available to them when they were looking for physical evidence with which to "salt" the mine, as suggested by Summers and Mangold.
Ortino's fate, we believe, is most likely found in Michael Kudrin's testimony of December 1963, when he recalled that as the bodies were being moved from the basement of the house into the truck, a little dog appeared from upstairs, and rushed into the courtyard, obviously much distressed and upset and probably looking for his people. Kudrin is silent on whether or not the dog was behaving like a guard dog, but it would not have been out of the ordinary for a Frenchie -- a famously protective breed -- to become territorial and vicious in defense of his family, the moreso because their scents were at that time overlayed with the smell of gunsmoke and blood. In any case, a soldier took up his bayonet and stabbed the dog to death, throwing his body into the truck with the Romanovs. "A dog's death to dogs," Kudrin remembered Goloshchokin commenting as they stood watching.
We think that perhaps some of the "mammal bones" found at the Four Brothers were those of Ortino.
What a brave little guy he was... =)
Forum Admin:
Penny,
Our copy of Kudrin's testimony from 1963 says only:
He bent over the tsar.
"The end of the Romanov Dynasty, right?! Yes...
The Red Guard brought out Anastasia's lap dog on a bayonet. When we passed the door to the upstairs, we heard a long pitous wail in the leaves. It was the last salute to the Emperor of all Russia. The dog's corpse was thrown beside the tsar.
"Dogs die a dog's death," said Goloshchyokin contemptuously."
Greg_King:
--- Quote ---Penny,
Our copy of Kudrin's testimony from 1963 says only:
He bent over the tsar.
"The end of the Romanov Dynasty, right?! Yes...
The Red Guard brought out Anastasia's lap dog on a bayonet. When we passed the door to the upstairs, we heard a long pitous wail in the leaves. It was the last salute to the Emperor of all Russia. The dog's corpse was thrown beside the tsar.
"Dogs die a dog's death," said Goloshchyokin contemptuously."
--- End quote ---
The difficulty here is one we had to wrestle with-and we may be wrong-but we believe Kudrin is mistaken in identifying the dog thus killed as Jemmy, i.e., Anastasia's dog (not that his ownership is any clearer since Anna Vyrubova says she gave the dog to the girls in general, not to Anastasia). This is from memory, but if I recall correctly Kudrin had previously never been in the Ipatiev House-so first one must ask how he knew this was Anastasia's dog?
More generally, the problem is that if we're talking about Jemmy-and if one assumes for the sake of argument that he was thus killed and thrown into the Ganina Mine where he was later found-it doesn't fit with the known facts. I know nothing of veterinary medicine or forensics, but Summers and Mangold did consult experts for "The File on the Tsar," and they present a pretty strong case that Jemmy, found in the mine in June, 1919, hadn't been there very long, and hadn't been dead very long. While a lot of their other assertions are no longer valid, this is one of their strongest points, indicating I think that the White investigators probably planted Jemmy's body there to be found.
Based on this-and in reading through their analysis it isn't a huge leap of faith-Jemmy would have had, of necessity, to have survived into spring of 1919. Since Joy was found in the possession of Michael Letemin, that leaves only one dog-Ortino-that could possibly have been killed on the night of the murders as Kudrin says. So it seemed reasonable, as someone unfamiliar with the family and their pets, that he simply misidentified the dog killed that night.
This may not be correct, but it accounts for what Summers and Mangold uncovered about Jemmy's condition when retrieved from the shaft-a condition that indicated he had not been dead for long (and perhaps there were suspicions about this, hence the absurd stories that the Bolsheviks built a false floor to conceal the dog, or that Jemmy was frozen in ice-neither of which was true), and also for Kudrin's account of a dog having been killed that night.
As with all things, it is an issue that has to be looked at and examined carefully, especially given the above, and the fact that Kudrin's memoirs contain a number of errors that undermine their veracity. He was certainly there, but I wouldn't take his identification of the dog as particularly definitive given what we know now about Jemmy's condition.
Greg King
Alice:
Pardon my ignorance in relation to this matter, but why would the White Army investigator's "plant" the dog's body in the mine? What would this achieve?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version