PRETTY PRINCESSES.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 12027, 28 March 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

PRETTY PRINCESSES.

The Crop of Royal Brides in Europe.

Thi» year of grace (write* Curtis Brown, the London correspondent of the New | Orleans "Times-Democrat") is going to «ee some Joig royal weddings, the fruit of long and serious confabs between monarch and monarch behind palace doors. The question of mating prospective rulers is becoming so difficult that the combined wits of all the crowned heads of Europe, with Premiers and ambassadors at hand to help think, are scarcely equal to solving it. The obvious remedy for what has become a really embarrassing situation is to let each young heir to a throne have his way and marry the American girl of his choice. It looks as if that would be the rule with the next crop of heirs, but the present generation of royal parents and of loyal subjects is not educated up to it yet, and no amount of fascination on the part of the American girl or on the part of her mamma will be able to effect the necessary change while Europe's thrones hold th«ir present occupants. So it becomes imperative to find brides for the heirs to the thrones of Germany and Russia, for the King of Spain and for the lesses young royalties now in the marriage market among the European princesses. AN UGLY LOT. One trouble is that all the royal young folk are so closely related. Intermarriage has steadily diminished the wits that crowned heads contain until such pessimist writers as Lombroso and Max Nordau and Dr Forbes Winslow are 'beginning to picture to themselves a future world ruled by madmen and idiots. There is not a royal prince or princess in all Europe who is not a cousin in some degree to every other prince and princess, and those who have the same religion and enough traits in common to make them sympathetic have, as a rule, the same great-grandparents—a fact that does not promise well for the future of monarchical institutions.

Another result of constant intermarriage has been that the present lot of -unmarried princesses in Europe is mostly far from good looking'. Theoretically, of course, every princess is lovely. It is as difficult to refrain from mechanically writing "'"beautiful " before their names as it used to be for the country reporter to write of wedding presents without saying that they were "numerous and costly." Their heavy, stupid faces become a source of embarrassment if their portraits accompany the text describing their, beauty. RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. There are some three dozen sovereign families •in Continental Europe, and between them they can muster no more than twenty princesses who are eligible for marriage to reigning monarchs. Six of them belong to the Austrian Imperial Family, sis to various branches of the Bourbons, two to, the deposed House of Hanover, and the others mostly to the minor German and grand ducal families. ■Fourteen of the twenty are Roman Catholics, four are Protestants, and two profess the Orthodox Greek faith. This, of course, greatly reduces the number who are eligible as the brides of the two best parties in Europe—the Russian heir-pre-sumptive, Grand Duke Michael, and the successor to the German Imperial throne, Crown 'Prince Frederick William. The Czarina must be an Orthodox Greek and the German* 'Empress must be a Protestant, so that were Roman Catholic princesses chosen as the brides of the future Czar, and Kaiser thev would have to change their faith. Cases in which Roman Catholic princesses have renounced their religion are, however, extremely rare for it is a rule without exception among the Hapsburgs, the Bourbons and othef sovereign houses that their daughters may not, even for the most urgent political reasons, change their religion. There is not one single contemporary Catholic princess in Europe who has abandoned her faith in order to contract a marriage with) a sovereign of another persuasion, so that the Russian and German heirs will have to seek their consorts in other directions. A change of faith is also almost unknown among orthodox Greek royalties, w'hereas it is nothing uncommon for a Protestant princess to embrace a new religion for politicomatrimonial reasons. The present Czarina of Russia and the Crown 'Princess of Montenegro were Protestants, who have'accepted the orthodox Greek faith for the sake of their husbands. A CEJOJINE BEAUTY. There are only two royal ladies of the Orthodox Greek faith who would be eligible as the bride of the Russian heir-presump-tive—one of them is his cousin, a Russian Grand Duchess of • scanty personal- attractions, and the other is Princess Xenia of Montenegro, the daughter of the reigning Prince of Montenegro and sister of the Queea of Italy. Princess Xenia is now twenty-one years of age and a brunette beauty of semi-Oriental type. She was educated in St Petersburg and Paris, so that she is a young lady of fashionable accomplishments, with none of the rustic limitations that might be expected in the daughter of a prince who still disr penses justice to his subjects under an ancient tree in front of his modest residence. Her lineage is of the best, for she can trace her descent back to a prince of the tenth century, and her ancestors have been recognised as rulers of Montenegro for the last two hundred years. Her sisters, too, have made good matches, for Prince Nicholas of Montenegro has been remarkably successful in arranging matrimonial alliances for members of his family. One of his daughters is Queen of Italy, another is a princess of Battenberg and two are Russian grand duchesses, -so that Princess Xenia might well be selected as the future Empress of Russia. Of course, all sorts of minor royalties have been in love with the beauteous Xenia, but the members of the royal house of MontenegTO are as shrewd and thrifty in matchmaking as the royal house of Denmark, whence came the Queen of England, the Russian Czarina and the King of Greece, besides various lesser personages, crowned or likely to be crowned eventually. So, while there is any hope of bringing off a match' between the Princess and the Grand Duke Michael, the other suitors will have to wait. Among them is the Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse, whose divorce from Princess Victoria Merita caused her august grandmother, the late Queen Victoria, to be greatly disturbed. Failing Princess Xenia, Grand Duke Michael will have to seek a wi e among, the Protestant princesses of England and Germany who may be willing to adopt the Orthodox Greek faith.

AN AUSTRIAN BEAUTY. Another young beauty who jitands high in the imperial marriage mart is Archduchess Marie Henriette of Austria, who is nineteen years old and a distant cousin of the Emperor Francis Joseph. Her father Archduke Frederic, is the head of the'third branch of the Hapsburgs and brother to the queen-mother of Spain. Archduchess Marie Henriette was brought up in the country, at her father's place m Hungary, but she now spends the winter months "in Vienna, where she is a great favourite in society. If it were not that the Pope objects to the marriage of first cousins, the radiant Princess Mario probably would be the choice of younj; King Alfonso XIII. of

Spain who has a keen eye for beauty and who has begun to look about for a brid e In fact, he will soon make a tour of the Continent, under his mother's guidance, £ pick out a queen for Spain. Unhappily for Dim, however, the princess has to be chosen solely on account of family and political considerations, regardless of whether she i* attractive or not.

Another of the four notable exceptions to the general run of plain princesses, Marie Josephine of Bourbon, is a granddaughter of King Ferdinand of Sicily, who lo.it his throne some thirty years ago. This deposed family resides at Cannes, in the ■South of France. Princess Marie Josephine i" tall and active, an expert yachtswoman, ■i skilled rider and 1 a. crack lawn tennis 1 layer. She is twenty-one years old, and »n admirable match for a Roman Catholic ounce, but, like the Archduchess Marie, is u barred) by religion from the competition For the German and Russian thrones.

A SAD STORY. But the most beautiful of all the mari- ageable princesses of Europe is Wiltrud .Marie Alix of Bavaria, who is now nineteen years old. She, too, is a brunette, with wonderful dark eyes, perfect features and long, brown, wavy hair. Of course, all princesses are said to be as accomplished as they are beautiful, but here is one who would shine among brilliant girls anywhere, irrespective of her title. She is a musician of high order, a painter of merit, a linguist and a classical scholar, an authoress in a small way, and also a, rider and a fencer. She has the reputation of being an excellent revolver shot. She is, in short, a genius; but in her veins flows the blood of the Wittelbachs, who are tainted with insanity through and through. Insanity has been in the family for three centuries, and has been cultivated' by repeated intermarriages. The members of the house of Wittelbach are, as a rule, either geniuses or lunatics, and those who in early life have been geniuses have often developed insanity in later yeairs. The mad King Louis of Bavaria, who was Wagner's patron, was first cousin to Princess Wiltrud. In these circumstances, the most beautiful of European princesses may well experience difficulties in making a good match. Germany's future empress. England haa fondly hoped that the Crown Prince of Germany would choose his bride from among king Edward's nieces, one of whom, the young Princess Alice of Albany, has been selected for him time and again by English chroniclers. The Princess is not what you would call a beauty, but she is intelligent and nice, and would come nearer to the German Emperor's idea of a royal hausfrau than any haughty Austrian or Russian princess. It seems more likely, however, that the Crown Prince will marry another second cousin, Princess Alexandra of Cumberland, and thus settle the old feud between the Hohenzollerns and the Hanoverians, caused by the fact that the former family seized the throne of the King of Hanover, Princess Alexandra's grandfather.