Continuing on, according to Gilliard, Olga "picked up everything extremely quickly, and always managed to give an original turn to what she learned. I well remember how, in one of our first grammar lessons, when I was explaining the formation of the verbs and the use of the auxiliaries, she suddenly interrupted me with: 'I see, monsieur. The auxiliaries are the servants of the verbs It's only poor 'avoir' which has to shift for itself.' " It appears that Olga borrowed books from Gilliard to read outside of her studies and that he "was very careful to indicate by notes in the margin the passages or chapters she was to leave out. I used to give her a summary of these. The reason I put forward was the difficulty of the text or the fact that it was uninteresting." Gilliard continues to recount an amusing incident when Olga was reading Les Miserables:
Olga Nicolaievna was reading "Les Miserables," and had reached the description of the battle of Waterloo. At the beginning of the letter she handed me a list of the words she had not understood, in accordance with our practice. What was my astonishment to see in it the word which is forever associated with the name of the officer who commanded the Guard. I felt certain I had not forgotten my usual precautions. I asked for the book to verify my marginal note, and realised my omission. To avoid a delicate explanation I struck out the wretched word and handed back the list to the Grand-Duchess.
She cried, "Why, you've struck out the word I asked papa about yesterday!"
I could not have been more thunderstruck if the bolt had fallen at my feet. "What! You asked your...
"Yes, and he asked me how I'd heard of it, and then said it was a very strong word which must not be repeated, though in the mouth of that general it was the finest word in the French language."
A few hours later I met the Tsar when I was out walking in the park. He took me on one side and said in a very serious tone, "You are teaching my daughters a very curious vocabulary, monsieur. . . . "
I floundered in a most involved explanation. But the Tsar burst out laughing, and interrupted: "Don't worry, monsieur. I quite realised what happened so I told my daughter that the word was one of the French "army's greatest claims to fame."
Margaret Eagar relates another anecdote dealing with Olga's education: "One day the arithmetic master, a professor of algebra from one of the universities, wished Olga to write something; she asked his leave to go in to the Russian master, who was teaching little Tatiana in the next room. He said she could go, but asked her what she wanted to say to him. She told him she could not spell "arithmetic." He told her how this difficult word was written, and she exclaimed, with great admiration, "How clever you are! and how hard you must have studied to be able, not only to count so well, but to spell such very long words!" She thought me a marvel of education, and confided in her music master that no one in the whole world knew so much as I did; she thought I knew everything, except music and Russian.”
The House of Special Purpose describes some of the trouble Gibbes had with Anastasia. “Once, after a disturbed lesson, he refused to give her five marks, the maximum (and customary) number. For a moment he wondered what might happen; then, purposefully, Anastasia left the room. Within minutes she returned, carrying one of the elaborate bouquets that seemed always to be in waiting. ‘Mr. Gibbes,’ she said winningly, ‘are you going to change the marks?’ He hesitated before he shook his head. Describing it long afterwards in a long letter (1928) to the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, the Tsar’s brother-in-law in Paris, Gibbes wrote: Drawing herself up to the most of her small height, she marched into the schoolroom next door. Leaving the door wide open, she approached the dear old Russian professor, Peter Vassilievich Petrov. ‘Peter Vassilievich’, she said, ‘allow me to present you with these flowers’. By all the rules he should have refused them, but professors are human; he did not. Later, we made it up again, and I received my bouquets once more, for the Grand Duchess nearly always gave me one during those early years. I—well, I was more careful in my marking. We had both learned a lesson.”
Gilliard began tutoring Alexei on October 2, 1912. Apparently, Alexei "did not know a word of French, and at first I had a good deal of difficulty. My lessons were soon interrupted, as the boy, who had looked to me ill from the outset, soon had to take to his bed.” Alexei's education was definitely stunted by his frequent breaks in his studies due to his hemophilia. This seemed to have caused Gilliard some frustration because not only could he not get as far as he'd liked to with Alexei's lessons, but he also didn't know why Alexei was ill so often.
After Gilliard was trusted with the secret, he spoke to Nicholas and Alexandra about their son's constant supervision by Derevenko, Alexei was allowed a little more freedom. "Everything went well at first, and I was beginning to be easy in my mind, when the accident I had so much feared happened without a word of warning. The Tsarevitch was in the schoolroom standing on a chair, when he slipped, and in falling hit his right knee against the corner of some piece of furniture. The next day he could not walk. On the day after the subcutaneous haemorrhage had progressed, and the swelling which had formed below the knee rapidly spread down the leg. The skin, which was greatly distended, had hardened under the force of the extravasated blood, which pressed on the nerves of the leg and thus caused shooting pains, which grew worse every hour.”
Alexei's, Maria's, and Anastasia's educations continued in Tobolsk after things had settled down enough there. Lessons started at nine and then they had a break from eleven to twelve for a walk with Nicholas. Gilliard explains that because there was no classroom in the house at Tobolsk, they sometimes met in the first floor large hall or in Alexei's room. After they had had tea, lessons continued until about 6:30.
In Volkov's memoirs, he writes that a man named Pankratov approached Nicholas and asked if he would like a local schoolteacher to teach the children. According to Volkov, Nicholas sent Pankratov to ask Alexandra what she thought. This confused me because I've never heard of this teacher before, but her name was Claude Michailovna Bitner. I used the search feature but couldn't find her name anywhere on this forum. Does anyone know anything more about her or whether or not she really did teach the children?
As a last note, I wanted to share a tidbit that was interesting to me. Margaret Eager mentions that in honor of Alexei's birth, the Tsar established quite a few schools and scholarships in his son's name.
Does anyone else have anything to add to this (rather long) summary of the children's education?
