EMPRESS ALEXANDRA, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN ON ANY THRONE?
Rather small hips; a waist that seems long, that tapers, that is round; a flat back and an unbroken straight line down the front of her gown still bring out to distraction those suave curves for which the figure of the Czar’s consort is famous in all the Courts of Europe. The waves of hair and the pellucid complexion of Her Imperial Majesty are rhythms in a symphony of which her ravishing form is the climax. No woman on any other throne is so suggestive of the lily. But she can do plain and fancy sewing, her own mother taught her how to cook, she can nurse with skill, and she likes Munich beer.
In this, the thirty-fifth year of her age, the Czarina seems to retain little of that poetical slenderness of frame which inspired fragments of versification when she was married twelve years ago. She is obviously corseted today in the style appropriate to fullness of figure, avers the competent authority who notes such circumstances for the European newspaper in closest touch with the Russian Court – the Paris Figaro. Over the head of Alexandra Feodorovna flows the same Niagara of dark auburn hair which was her greatest physical charm when she was merely Princess Alix Helena Louise Beatrice Victoria of Hesse and knew the pinch of poverty. Her skin was sallow in those days, says a writer of reminiscences in the Paris, Gaulois, who saw Alix of Hesse in her Darmstadt period when she had a deep dimple in one cheek and made tea for her mother. The color of this remarkable hair was then reddish brown; but Mrs. Amalia Küssner Coudert, who painted the Czarina’s portrait a few years ago, writes in the Century that the color is a “brown gold.” In any case, it is the finest head of hair in any Court, thinks’ the Figaro’s authority, who informs the world that Her Imperial Majesty never uses curl papers or heating irons in the production of those wavy effects which impart to her temples the aspect of snow by moonlight gleaming through ferns. The Czarina finds exquisite solace in having her tresses combed while reading those masterpieces of contemporary French literature to which she is said to be partial.
The nose of this lady has likewise a literature of its own. It is a very white nose, according to the Gaulois, the most regular nose, this authority ventures to think, in all Europe. It denotes a delicate, sensitive nature, we read, being long and thin, with pliable nostrils and slight, very slight, tendency to the aquiline. This proclaims that firmness of disposition so conspicuously absent from the Czar’s nose – the organ being retroussé in His Imperial Majesty’s case and indicative of infirmity of purpose. The ears of the Czarina are large, but they lie close to the Imperial head and have a length of lobule seen only in human beings of the thoroughbred Royal variety. The lips are the reddest of curtains before the pearliest of teeth. The rigors of a St. Petersburg winter punish these beautiful lips. The Czarina cannot face the severity of the elements without a veil. Perhaps the infirmity of health, which is said to have tried her in youth, still lurks in her system, for the Czarina has a dread of cold weather. She fears its effect, insinuates a writer in London Truth, upon her famous complexion. Yet in the summer season Her Imperial Majesty spends much of her leisure in the open air. She rides and walks freely about Peterhof, that paradise of landscape architecture, wherein the five young children of the most beautiful woman on any throne gambol under the tutelage of a regiment of soldiers armed to the teeth, until the winter coops them up again.
To the suppleness of Her Imperial Majesty’s figure, to the ease of her bearing, to the symmetrical outline of her waist, to the stateliness of her altitude – exceeding the average height of her sex – many an enthusiast has essayed to do justice in the columns of the French press. Her shoulders, it is recorded, are always thrown back. Her chest is always well forward. She ever stands erect. Her waist line is accentuated without waspishness of length or vulgarity of shortness. Her swelling port is self contained austere. It is only the head that ever droops, but that droop is a swan’s. The eyelashes are long – weeping willows veiling those abysmal depths, her eyes. Such eyes! Blue, says the Paris Figaro. Gray, insists the Gaulois. At any rate, the look is demure, the expression pensive. They are eyes that flash, that swim, that look up unexpectedly and drop again. For the mastery of her complexion there is constant war of all shades of pink with all shades of white. She is the very rose of women, exhaling the fragrance of her nature with a perennial spontaneity. But she wants her own way all the time, and, in the estimation of our French authorities, she gets it, too. This beautiful woman it was who caused the dismantling of the so called cabinet of the 19th of February – the study in which Alexander II decreed emancipation of the serfs. The apartment was left intact ever after for the inspiration of posterity until Alexandra Feodorovna ordered it dismantled and her own huge swimming tank conveyed thither. This display of lack of the historical instinct horrified Mr. Pobyedonostsyev, but, according to the gossip of this most gossipy of European Courts, he was powerless in the matter.
This same Pobyedonostsyev, for so many years Procurator of the Holy Synod, would seem to have troubled the early wedded life of the Czarina. The old gentleman did not take her conversion to the Orthodox faith of Russia at all seriously. The Czarina had been reared in Evangelical tenets, to which she clung with obstinacy. It has been observed that the daughters of the beloved Queen Victoria of England were prone to extreme liberality of opinion in matters of religion. Now the Czarina was the daughter of the Princess Alice of England whose sweetness of disposition was allied with a dislike of dogma akin to that of the German Emperor’s mother. This last lady had turned her back upon the faith in which she was reared to such an extent that she won for herself the name of free thinker before she died. She is said to have influenced her niece, the present Czarina, to an extent incompatible with the acceptance of the teachings of the Greek Orthodox Church. This may be the idlest gossip, but it is said to have troubled Mr. Pobyedonostsyev sorely. He did his best, it is declared, to prevent the marriage of the then Princess Alix of Hesse and the then Czarevitch. As it was, the marriage did not take place until Nicholas II had ascended the throne. In the document prepared for the Czarina to sign and submitted to her on the eve of her wedding, she found the religion she was abjuring referred to as “unbelief.” She insisted upon the substitution of a term less harsh. Mr. Pobyedonostsyev’s distrust of Her Imperial Majesty was confirmed from that time.
Matters were not mended by the arrival of daughter after daughter during the first seven years of the Czarina’s wedded life. She had been married nearly ten years before the birth of the Grand Duke Alexis. For months prior to that event Her Imperial Majesty had been a patient of the late Professor Schenck of Vienna, whose theories regarding the determination of sex in the unborn won him much celebrity. Finally, the Czar and his Consort went to the shrine of St. Seraphim, to whose intercession the sex of the Czarina’s youngest born is ascribed by the faithful. The Heir to the Throne of Nicholas II has now entered his third year. He had never, says the Figaro, had the whooping cough or the croup or measles. Twenty teeth have been cut by the Heir to the Throne of Russia, who has just been through a trying summer. His gums were so much inflamed that it was feared they would have to be lanced. For one whole week the Czarina walked the floor of her apartments by night with the little one in her arms.
She is, say all reports, the most devoted of mothers. The heat of the water in which her children bathe is tested by herself with a thermometer. The children are dressed every morning under her own supervision. According to the Gaulois, English is the language of the family circle, although French is likewise used. The Czarina does not seem to be facile in the use of Russian, a tongue she did not begin to learn until her engagement to the Czar. She cannot speak it at all fluently, according to those who ought to know. But her daughters are to be made proficient; it seems, in English, French, German and Russian. They will be taught to cook, says the Gaulois, to sew and to embroider. The astonishment of the Czarina when she was told that in the United States young ladies of the wealthy classes are not taught to cook, to sew or to nurse, is represented in the same newspaper as very great.
The social life of Her Imperial Majesty on its purely official side is magnificent, but tedious, the best American account of it having been supplied to The Century by Mr. Herbert J. Hagerman, who was at one time second Secretary of the United States Embassy in St. Petersburg. “The few great functions which are given at the Winter Palace,” he writes, “are, without doubt, more magnificent than any others in the world.” A grand ball opens the social season late in January:
“The suite of enormous rooms on the second floor of the palace, part of them overlooking the Neva, and adjoining Their Majesties’ private apartments, are used. The palace is so large that probably not one fifth of its available State Apartments are used on this occasion, in spite of the fact that about four thousand people are entertained.”
“After the polonaise of the Imperial party, nothing more, in fact, than a stately walk once or twice around the room, the Emperor and Empress speak for a few minutes to the chief diplomats, and the dancing begins. The Empress herself cannot enjoy it very much, as conventionalities require her to request the Ambassadors to accompany her in the contra-dances. Sometimes these gentlemen, however, aristocratic, and, as they frequently know little or nothing about the dance, the result cannot be entirely pleasing either to themselves or to the Empress. She occasionally calls upon some young officer to dance the deux temps with her, but even then she must dance quite alone; the wands of the Masters of Ceremony tap the floor and all other dancers immediately retire.”
“After supper there is a short cotillion, with few favors except flowers, which, however, are, without much exaggeration, worth their weight in gold at that time of year. It requires a person of unusual energy and presence of mind to lead the complicated movement of the cotillion at this ball, and the young officer who does so richly deserves the personal thanks of the Empress, which she very cordially renders him.”
“The supper itself is most astonishing. It is by no means a light repast, and is served, with four or five wines, to every guest, all seated at table. With five or six courses and four thousand people, the amount of porcelain requires is enormous. It is all beautiful, of peculiar Slavic designs, made only for the Emperor’s private use at the Imperial factory near the city. In the magnificent Salle des Armoires, is laid, the Empress’s table, a round on a raised, dais, for the Grand Dukes.”
http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/2013/08/empress-alexandra-feodorovna-most.html
areudirty
jbbartram-illu
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis