MARIE ROMANOV.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 102, 2 May 1931, Page 9 (Supplement)

MARIE ROMANOV.

-WHAT MY EXILE HAS TAUGHT ME." -■ PHILOSOPHY OP A GRAND DUCHESS. TEE&S STORY TO INTERVIEWER. The Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, the granddaughter of a Czar of Russia and a King of Greece, niece and cousin to kings, queens and princes, opened the door of what might be called her modest apartment—located near the dress establishment by which she is employed—and 6aid, "I am tne g ran d duchess," as simply as if she had said, "I am Marie Romanov," which is what she would be did she decide to substitute the status 0 f an American citizen for that of a homeless woman with a grand ducal distinction. The life of the grand duchess began ; n a palace, reached an artificially glowing apotheosis in her marriage to Prince Wuli&m of Sweden and came to a moving picture climax in her escape out of Russia without a passport at the time that Kerensky began cracking under the impact of Communists. She has been part of a word that has died and she eeems to have accepted the death certificate as valid. She has beeu young eiiou*h to remember and to tell. She has told about it in a book, "Education of a Princess," in which she relates the ftnry of her life up to the time of her escape to Rumania, where she was. the guest of Queen Marie, her first cousin. The Ways of Royalty. The grand duchess is blessed with a pleasant ordinariness. If she ever had the rsga! manner, the trials and tribulations to which she has been subject have rubbed it off.. Perhaps those who have fceen bred to courts and courtiers take each other so much for granted that they do not require the' regal d anner W which to signal each other. I have always had the feelingi that, the late Czar, to mention no others, grew a beard to hide a weak chin. When I suggested to the grand duchess that the chief ally of a successful revolution is the state of government revolted against, she admitted that there was something to that and promised tentatively to contribute a book some day on the reasons; the movements and the psychology which brought on the revolution. But before the attacks that problem, she will continue her memoirs from the time of her Escape out of Russia, with which "Education of a Princess" closes, to her first departure from Europe in 1928, when she ret sail for the New World for the first time. She says that she has become philosophical the end of the monarchical system in Russia. She spoke as one who realised that the clock cannot be turned back, especially by those who don't know' the time of day. ! She referred smil--My to her cousin the Grand Duke Cyril who, in his Paris home, has himself proclaimed Czar of Russia every six years. She does sot belong to any of the royalist societies formed by refugee Russians, especially in Paris, and speaks of her cousins suffering from vain illusions. But when I asked her if jshe could have any hope of a restoration, she shrugged her shoulders and said: "But can you blame anyone, for having hopes ? We White Russians have been cut off from Russia for fourteen years and we lave no idea of what may, be going on under the surface. I myself don't belong to any of the royalist organisations — because'of my convictions.' I don't lieve, however, that we can in any way impose our opinions on the population of Russia."

And then she said: "Russians now going through its growing pains, but when those pains are ended and it has reached its full stature, it will be a great country, whatever its form of government may be." Brother's Part in Basputin Affair. Her process of adjustment from the status of dependant royalty tg that of independent citizenship-really began at the outbreak 1 of."• the' war, 'or; shortly thereafter, when she became a" nurse at a base hospital. She was probably still far from sure of herself at the time she escaped to Roumanian During her six months' stay at the.court of Queen Marie she learned that her brother the Grand Duke Dmitir—who had been banished to a Persian outpost. for his part iu the murder of Rasputin—was safe in London, to which she then went. She realised, she says that the only way in which she could fit in, and fit in quickly, to her altered circumstances was to throw herself into some work. She found nothing to do in London and went to Paris, where, as she puts in her euphemism, there was more scope for her. imagination. During her stay in Sweden she had had training (strange as that may seem) as a commercial designer, specialising i' l embroideries. The fashion for embroideries was coming in again in Paris and 60 she opened a factory and learned the nse of machines. "I was submerged," she said, "by my success and inexperience." At one of the art exhibitions her ernbroi* deries won two first prizes. After five or six years of this her eyes turned to America, which she had never' visited, but of which she had heard and read, chiefly in the novels of Sinclair-Lewis. She arrived there in 1928 for the first time, returned to Paris aid returned in 1929, Her plans, as she puts it, are at the mercy of her passport difficulties. The problem of adaptation to a new set of conditions was worked out, she says, during the first years of, exile. ."Something new had to be built up—something that no one ever could take away -a lot of things which, together, make you stand on your feet and face the world." The process of adjustment started, she said, when she learned to talk to people in a manner that made them tell her what they really thought. (These people no longer found any of the old occasions for yes-ing her all over the lot.) What made her philosophical about the overthrow' of the Russian monarchy was hearing all kinds of opinions and not trying to avoid those "pinions and convictions which she would lave found disagreeable to her royalist Predilections.—(A.A.N.S. Copyright.)