THE WIFE OF THE CZAR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2389, 14 December 1899, Page 53

THE WIFE OF THE CZAR.

So modestly has she lived amidst the splendours of the Russian Court that the world knows little about the wife of the Czar, save that she is a womanly woman who lives in a secluded mansion and nurses her ov.-n children. As Empress she sits o"i a throne of gold, wearing a crown glis-

tening with a hundred diamonds, hub she is happier by far when tha crown is laid aside and she may nurse her child in the quiet of her own room. Her throne is encrusted with a thousand rubies and a thousand other precious stones, and her palaces glitter with the wealth which has been buill up by millions of subjects for centuries past. But the palaces and their thousand treasures are like the jewels in the Tower. They are nothing to the happy mother in Peterhof Park, tall, slight, with hazel eyes and fair hair, who spends her day playing with her children and studying the condition of the Russian poor. The Empress :^ head of the body charged with the arrangements for poor law relief, and "has read all the best works on the English poor law. The furniture at Peterhof is of the simplest description, much of it having been made in London. Only three of the thousands of wedding presents are in the Empress's private rooms — a gift of tapestry from the French people, which the workmen had been making since 1879 ; a. Japanese ivory sea eagle, larger than lifesize ; and a three-fold Japanese screen of grey and greenish white silk, representing the sea in a storm and the foam of the breakers. The Czarina's bedroom at Peterhof has not a single picture in it, though the palaces teem with thousands. Instead, the walls are hung with blue satin brocade ; there is a table and a chest of drawers inlaid with brass and tortoise-shill ; and electric lights are fixed to sham candles. Everytring in the home-life of the Empress is on the same simple seals. At chapel on Sundays, though the sanctuary is studded with jewels and is reached through golden gates, the same simplicity is observed. Tha choir is invisible, instrumental music is forbidden. When in England, the Empress, then Princess Alix, enjoyed herself ia a plain lodging-house — the owner of which received a message ' and gifts from the Empress on her marriage — and it is in the same homely spirit that she still lives. She speaks live languages. Riding, painting, rowing, sketching, swimming, and tennis are her favourite recreations, and her skill as a cartoonist would make even "F. C. G." jealous. Freed from the fear of the censor, she indulges with her pen and pencil in a way which makes even Russfan Ministers tremble, drawing lin-m in caricature which would mean death or Siberia to any other artist. She has drawn the Czar himself — a solemn, bearded, but bald infant in long clothes, tied in an armchair, and surrounded by a host of Grand Dukes and Grand. Duchssses armed with feeding-bottles, all insisting on feeding him in a different way. No won.ler ihe Czar is screaming at the top of Irs vt 'cc ! But the- Czarina, if fche is a womanly woman, is not the less an Empress. Her tfict and sympathy have bseu very marked. It was not fashionable, perhaps, but it ■ was womanly, that she should order her weddingdresses in iloscow, and that she should patronise a Windsor- tradesman rather than gi to 'the West End. It is iold of her. too, that, fearing that the French would regard her as a German and hate her for it, she took care to explain to a French deputation that they must not think of her as a German Princess, but that in espousing tho Emperor she also espotised the Russian people, and that from henceforth all her interests soul sympathies would be wrapped up iv Lhoss of Russia. The Empress has not made many speeches, and she is not often in tho public eye ; but she is an Eniprcss nevertheless, and something moie than a fiqureheyd. Even if she had done nothing else, she has nursed her own baby, and an Empress nursing a baby is a sight worth living to see. — From the Young Woman.