#memoirs

[mysharona1987]

[a-queer-seminarian]

From Burning Butch by RB Mertz, 2022

The next night, I got my hair cut short. I closed my eyes and thought of Samson, and how hair was dead skin growing out of you, like memories, and how, in my case, it might give me more strength to shed myself of the past, the dead cells, the broken chargers, the burned bridges. I watched it all fall to the floor around me.

When she was finished, I looked like a boy and a girl. I smiled hello to myself.

“You look good,” the stylist said, playing with the wave of reddish-blonde hair she’d left sticking up in the front. “It looks like a little flame.”

I thought of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down to the first twelve apostles, after Jesus was dead. There were tongues of fire on their foreheads, to show that God was talking through them now, too, not just Jesus. How now, everyone could be a Christ, like every human body was the ears and eyes and lips of God. That was the whole point of it.

She asked if I wanted my neck done like a boy or a girl.

“Boy,” I said.

I walked out of the salon into gray spring. I pulled my green blazer a little tighter, lifted the collar to cover the newly shaved back of my neck. Walking into the Panera for coffee, I caught a glimpse of myself in the window and thought I was someone else. Would Jesus still recognize me? Would he ever come out to defend me, or the idea of me?

[foreverinthepagesofhistoryy]

Louis Mountbatten and The Romanovs

"These old family photograph albums bring back memories of all the happy times we had together in that almost unbelievable world before the Revolution."

"We used to see each other quite often either in Germany, or in Russia. I loved my Russian family and I loved Russia too"

"Olga, Marie, Anastasia and Tatiana were all very beautiful. I remember I had always secretly hoped to marry Marie."

"Yet anyone less like an autocrat than my uncle Nicky would be hard to imagine…he was a very, very kind-hearted simple charming man."

"He was never happier than when he was outside playing with his children. I remember he would purchase us all chocolate-ices, and after, settle down with a long book to read quietly in peace"

"And now, all that was finished. All the happy memories were things of the past…"

Lord Louis "Dickie" Mountbatten

[ohsoromanov]

Dresses of Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana and Maria. The State Hermitage Museum.

From the memoirs of Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden:

"Tatiana Nikolaevna loved to dress up. And the dresses, even the old ones, looked good on her. She knew how to wear clothes, was admired, and loved to be liked. She was sociable and would like to have friends, but young girls were not invited to the Palace. The Empress thought that the four sisters were capable of entertaining each other. <...> They wore clothes before they were damaged, and when they grew out of them, then the dresses of the older ones were given to the younger ones. The Empress did not like to waste money, although she was so generous in charity. <…> I was very often with the older Grand Duchesses, who did not have their own maid of honor, and often went out with them. They were very interested in everything I was doing, and all four of them came to dress me for the ball, somewhat to the embarrassment of my maid, who felt that she could no longer fix my outfits when four living Grand Duchesses were in the room and each tried in her own way. Once they decided that my dress required a ruby necklace. I said that I had no such idea and that the pearls would be fine. Tatiana Nikolaevna ran out and appeared with several of her brooches, and wanted me to put them on. Of course, I refused, much to her surprise. "We sisters always borrow from each other," she said, "when we think one's necklace will fit the other's dress."

[roses-of-the-romanovs]

"[Alexei] was at a toyshop at Darmstadt with his nurse and sailor attendant, he fell in love with a toy engine but had not enough money left over to buy it. A young Russian student from the Technische Hochschule overheard the nurse telling him so and shyly offered to pay the missing sum which the boy gratefully accepted. This is probably the only time an heir to the Russian throne has been financially assisted by a subject." —Recollections of Victoria Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven (from the Mountbatten papers at the University of Southampton)

[microcosme11]

A soldier makes Napoleon crack up

Napoleon had a superb head, eyes that flashed lightning; his bearing was noble and severe. However, one day I saw the great man in the throes of irrepressible laughter; an emperor may laugh just as any other man; sovereigns would be greatly to be pitied if at times they did not have those good opportunities to laugh which do one so much good.

Here is the occurrence: We were at Courbevoie; the Emperor was reviewing a regiment of the young Guard, recently increased by numerous recruits. His Majesty was questioning these young men.

‘‘And you, where do you come from?”

“Sire,” replied the recruit, “I am from Pézenas; and my father had the honour of shaving Your Eminence when you went through our town.”

At these words, the Emperor became man, decorum was forgotten; I do not believe that Napoleon ever laughed so heartily even when he was at school at Brienne. The review ended gaily; laughter is contagious, the answer was repeated from rank to rank, from right to left; everyone burst into laughter; the native of Pézenas was proud to have made the review so merry.

Recollections of an Officer of Napoleons Army by Captain Elzear Blaze

archive.org

[ezmel]