It would not be doing justice to the memory of dear Great Aunt Dorothea to leave you with the notion that she was naught but an embroidress, far from it.
In her younger days - as oft was the way with single women of indeterminate fortune then - GAD was employed as a nanny to the children of the too-rich-to-nurture classes. Not content though to work in this country, GAD secured herself a post in pre-revolutionary Russia where, it is rumoured, she mixed in the most exalted circles - a British nanny being a highly-prized catch among the nobility.
From her diaries one can catch a sense of the mood of the time - constancy to a known way of life, yet ever present the fear that it would all (as it did) end in a trice. Pure Chekhov was GAD.
My especial favourite moment from her record of her time there was her description of the necessary precautions against inviolation of chastity when traveling on the railways. Russian gentlemen - but above all Russian cavalry officers - could be relied upon to assail the gentile foreign maid at every inopportune moment. That being so, whenever the train entered a tunnel GAD would take one of her hat-pins and place it in her mouth point forward, so that should any dastardly Ruskie dare attempt to kiss her in the dark of the tunnel the cad would be rewarded for his affrontery with a sharp spike to the lips!
When finally GAD came home she brought with her several items of remembrance. There was one - a small doll of little beauty - that was her favourite. Her telling of how she came about it is stunning and compelling in its simplicity, yet awesome in its historical implications. According to GAD her final posting was as nanny to the doomed Romanovs, and when it was plain that their time was at an end and GAD must fly the country or die, little Anastasia gave GAD this doll as a keepsake and a thank you for all the love she had given to the poor, unhappy child.
Provenance is impossible to prove, but if GAD said it was Anastasia's doll then so it was and so it to this day is.
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