THE CZAR'S OLD NURSE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1687, 29 June 1904, Page 17

THE CZAR'S OLD NURSE

A picture of the way in which love levels all earthly distinctions is given in Mr James Creelman’s book “On the Great Highway.” Mr Creelman was in Rusia as a special corespondent at the time when the Czar (Alexander. Ill) walked a grief-stricken mourner, through the streets of St Petersburg, behind the coffin of liis old Ebglish nurse. He says:—On that dark, sbonny day when the Czar's English nurse died m the Winter Palace, I was in St. Petersburg, and I remember well how the wet show fell .from the blotched sky, and the wind whistled up the frozen Neva.

Wherever I went in Russia there was always present in> my mind the .figure of Alexander 111, as 1 once saw him, rid-' mg at the head of his Cuirassiers, an arrogant giant, on a great black horse, towering above his soldiers, the incarnation of brute force, splendid and terrible. But I was yet to see the human nature hidden under that glittering helmet and breastplate.

The Czar was with his Ministers when a messenger told him that his nurse was dead. Through the dull, harsh nature of Alexiinder there ran one stream of tenderness —love for this woman, Kitty, who had mothered him in boyhood. And she was dead. The autocrat of all the Russians went alone though the storm to the darkened room in the Winter Palace where his dead nurse lay. The. giant knelt beside her body 'with a great cry, and the attendants withdrew, and left him alone. For a long time he remained there with bowed head, and when he came out of the hushed chamber there was a look on his face that no one had ever seen there ibefore.

A whisper went about the city' that none but himself and his bfothers should keep watch dyer Kitty’s coffin. Alexander was the second son, and while his eider brother, the heir to the throne, was alive, the big, awkard boy was neglected. Even then, however, he was the favourite child ctf the English nurse, and his sullen nature responded to her touch.

There was little known about the life of this humble woman. She. was quiet and shy. rarely seen outside the magnificent Winter Palace where she lived: a patient, soft-voiced subject of Queen Victoria, but she modified and subdued the boy’s hard nature. How true was tho love of the Czar for this friend of liis boyhood is shown by the humility with which he followed her to the grave. No mourner rode that day. Through the' snow and slush the Czar and his brothers walked behind the hearse, side by side the Czar in the midcue. Not a note of pomp violated the simple pathos of the scene. The autocrat was simply a man walking humbly and reverently after the corpse of the woman who had loved him. It was a long way to the cemetery, but the Czar walked the whole distance. He sat in a pew of the Church of England for the first time, and watched the coffin at the altar rails. At the cemetery, when they lowered the coffin into the frozen ground . the keeper of the cemetrey laid a piece of carpet at the feet of liis Imperial Lord, and the Czar sank on his knees. He knelt there with the snow falling upon liis bared head until the grave was filled. Then, as he went away, lie turned for a last look at the mound where lie had laid the woman who had loved him ever since he was a boy.