QUEEN ALEXANDRA’S GIRLHOOD

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4366, 25 May 1901, Page 4 (Supplement)

QUEEN ALEXANDRA’S GIRLHOOD

Some amusing recollections of Queer. Alexandra as a girl are given in the “New York Independent” by the Danish Baron de Stampenbourg. Few people, he remarks, are aware that the secret aspiration of Princess Alexandra as a young lady was to be an actress. “Her beauty, her perfection of manner, and her not inconsiderable voice, only tended to encourage her in an attainment of her ideal. She secretly studied the great playwrights behind blinded windows at a late hour, when she was suppose,! to ho in bed. She and lire two sisters, Dagmar, now Czaress Dowager of Eussia, and Thyra, the Duchess of Cumberland, arranged for amateur theatricals on an improvised scale. Alexandra always insisted on playing the heroine. Being the oldest, her sisters surrendered the monopoly to her ■unconditionally. She is said to have evinced considerable talent, especially in character portrayal. As soon as her mother, the late Queen Louise, found that Alexandra was stealing the hours of her sleep studying Goethe and Oehlenschlaeger, manifesting a more than amateurish propensity for the stage, she banished theatricals from the castle for ever. She forthwith impressed upon her artistically inclined daughter that she was put into the world for something of greater importance than amusing people, and that she would have to give up all thought or ever being permitted to follow any sort of a professional career. Very few girls, even among royalty, have had an opportunity to give up as much for a professional choice ns Alexandra was ready to lay upon the shrine of scenic art at that time. Later on, at her marriage to the Prince of Wales, her splendid destiny dawned upon her, and wo hear no more of the "stage-struck’ Alexandra.”