The Evening Star Friday, FEBRUARY 10, 1928. A ROYAL PRETENDER.

Evening Star, Issue 19787, 10 February 1928, Page 4

The Evening Star Friday, FEBRUARY 10, 1928. A ROYAL PRETENDER.

Tu eke arc histories of the pirates. A fascinating volume remains to bo written by someone who shall bring together the stories of the Royal pretenders who have disturbed the minds of nations for a season. Perhaps the majority of them have been impostors, though the name does not bear necessarily that signification. But they spring up almost inevitably when kings are murdered. To pass by more legitimate royal claimants, there was in Bugland Lambert Simnel, who prolessed to be a son of the Duke of Clarence, who was drowned in his butt of malmsey in the Tower. Simnel was crowned in Dublin as King Edward VL, though ho ended his life as a scullion in the Royal kitchens. There was also Perkin Warbeck, who made claim to bo the younger of the two Princes con lined by Richard Crookback in the Tower. When King Louis XVI. lost his head in the French Revolution some people believed that his small son escaped out of prison (where as si fact ho died), and grew up to be an old man in England. At least one designing Frenchman, whose claim was rejected by a French court, professed to be the person. As romantic a story as any of these is that of the late Tsar’s alleged daughter, Anastasia, who is now proclaiming her Royal protensions in New York.

“Bullet and bayonet wounds.” it has been said of Anastasia, “disfigure her body. Her comely face is marred by a bruised mouth that smiles only on one side. Eight of her teeth have been knocked out, and her scalp hears the scars of stab wounds.” But “ the hand that extends from her maimed wrist is long-fingered and slender, the hand of an aristocrat.” The story that is told by her is not wholly inconceivable. If it can bo imagined to bo true, there is hardly a more pathetic story in the world. If it was invented for her—since Anastasia herself, on any reading of it, seems to have played no more than the most passive part in the drama—the evidence built up to afford an air of verisimilitude to its romance must bo allowed at least to have been most ingeniously constructed. The story goes that when the ill-fated Tsar, his wife, and his children were shot down by their brutal guard at Ekaterinburg, Anastasia, then a girl of seventeen, was the only one who was not killed outright. A young man, ono of the Red Guard told off to destroy the bodies, found her still alive, little better than a corpse, and by great efforts managed to smuggle her into Rumania. There she had brain fever, but in time revived, and afterwards bore a son to her deliverer, who, later still, was shot by Bolshevists. Later she was taken to Germany, where she tried to drown herself, and spent two years in an asylum for the insane. In Berlin her case came to tho attention of a certain Ambassador and of Russian exiles, and first the Police Commissioner, afterwards tho Crown Princess Cecilie, were impressed with her claim. By that time she had been ill again, with tuberculosis. Princess Cecilie had met Princess Anastasia when the latter was a little girl, but it was a wasted woman of twenty-four who was required to he identified with that small child. The Grand Duchess Olga, aunt of the Princess, was brought to visit her, with a woman named Sascha, who had been her childhood’s nurse, and though the visit was unexpected, and the Grand Duchess cam© in her poorest clothes, the pretender is said to have recognised her at once. She also recognised the nurse, and greeted her by a pet name of childhood which no one except the Princess had ever used. The Grand Duchess was disturbed and puzzled. The nurse was convinced of the sick woman’s identity with her

Royal charge by half a dozen bodily marks ami peculiarities—a molo on the back, flat feet, a protruding bone on the left foot, for example. Anastasia also recalled incidents of her childhood’s days that could hardly have been known to others. Other things, including incidents which had been published, she did not remember. A doctor who attended the Princess in 1914 thought that the identity- was genuine. The Grand Duke Cyril, without seeing her, branded Anastasia as an impostor, but his verdict was ascribed to political motives. A suspicious circumstance was that tho pretender, genuine or deceptive, spoke only broken German, and did not reply in cither Russian or English; but it was said that in her delirium she spoke Russian, and that she understood that language. .There was report also of her speaking a few words of English. Two years ago, when tho case was first producing a sensation, it was stated that no trace could bo found of Anastasia’s son or record of her marriage in Rumania. She appeared to have no interest in the son, but physicians were agreed that she was not insane. It is reported now that another Grand Duke, a first cousin ol late Tsar, has signified his belief in her profession. New York can bo depended on to make the most of the story, whatever may bo thought about it. It is explained that if the Romanoffs can prove Anastasia’s relationship to the cx-Tsar they can claim for her largo sums placed by him in foreign banks. No other advantage is likely to accrue to the enfeebled woman if her case is proved. It is the smallest of all possibilities that the Romanoffs wi il ever return to tho throne of Russia.