CZARISH MORALITY.

Kumara Times, Issue 1107, 17 April 1880, Page 4

CZARISH MORALITY.

[QUEENSLANDER.] We have always been assured by the English Press that the present Emperor of Russia was a man of a “ deeply religious sentiment,” whose life was saddened by the habitual melancholy that in a conscientious nature waits upon unusual responsibility. Such responsibility as by his position is imposed upon the Autocrat of all the Russias is so hopelessly impossible of discharge by sny human being that we have had no difficulty in accounting for the Czar’s melancholy, and have sympathised with a conscientious man’s sense of failure. We have naturally, however, regarded Alexander from the standpoint of Western ethics. As a ruler he has been eminently unsuccessful ; but a good man may be a bad ruler, and we have always understood he was “deeply imbued with the religious sentiment.” Reduced to plain English, we supposed this to mean that he was a right-minded man desirous of observing good faith and gentlemanly integrity in the various connavents of life. For the last fifty years Western Europe—or perhaps we should be less general, and saythe British public—has been accustomed to judge its princes much as it does other people. The same stigma attaches to a flagrant infraction of the decalogue by a royal sinner as by one moving in a humble sphere, and although the social consequences are of course very different, the royal scapegrace suffers as much for his laches as does plain Mr. Smith. From a man therefore deeply imbued with the religious sentiment” we are apt to look for some general observance of the Christian precepts. If our readers had formed the same conception of the melancholy Alexander as we had, they will share with us the shock of certain recent revelations. The St. Petersburgh correspondent of the S. M. Herald has favored the readers of that journal with a rather startling glimpse of Alexander’s social relations. The “ religious sentiment ” must suffer enough mortification to thoroughly account for the melancholy of Alexander’s spirit in groaning over the weaknesses of his flesh. With a wife devoted to him, and to whom he has been married for half a life-time, he has not scrupled to admit other favorites to the confidence and privileges of the marriage state, not privily and in secret, but with the shameless effrontery of a man whose position places him above the observance of social virtue. A man’s life, even though he be a monarch, is much shaped by the opinion of the society in which he lives. England has had princes who have been profligate because they believed profligacy to be a regal attribute. William 111. was an example ; and who has not smiled over Thackeray’s account of George ll.’ method of comforting his dying wife ? This latter sovereign was a truly devoted husband, and yet when his queen was dying and he stood sobbing beside her death-bead, to still her anxieties about his disconsolateness when he should have lost her, the affectionate husband blubbered out/* Grieve not for me, darling ; I shall still have my mistresses.” The dying queen could have surely felt little jealousy of these fat Hanoverian dames, or this solacing reflection would have been but old comfort for her last moments.

The .Romanoffs not having been very remarkable for spotless lives, Alexander, glancing back on the example set by his ancestors, may probably find cause for congratulating himself upon not being so bad by a great deal as they. Indeed, remembering something of Peter the Great’s household’s arrangements, it must be admitted that Alexander is by comparison almost puritanical. A hundred and sixty years ago the Great Czar, travelling back from France, paid Berlin a visit, remaining for four days the guest of old Frederick William, father of Frederick the Great. The witty little princess Wilhelmina was then a child of nine, and her account of this visit of a semi-barbaric sovereign, who was one of the strongest mixtures of heroic virtue and brutish savagery the world has ever seen, is infinitely droll. Carlyle gives the most graphic picture of this little four days’ episode that so ruffled the humdrum quiet of the Berlin Court. The Court of the savage old tyrant Frederick William—whose nature was sufficiently “ intense” to induce Mr. Carlyle with drool perversity to describe him as of|the “ truly poetic temperament—was proper enough to suit even modern notions of correctness. The sovereign was exempt from any stain of licentiousness, having indeed a weakness for nothing but giants for his Potsdam guards. The Czar came leisurely from Pans with an immense retinue, among whom were about 400 ladies—though of course this number is a playful exaggeration of Wilhelmina’s— attendant on the Czarina ; maids of honor in fact. “ Many of these had in their arms a baby in rich if yOU asked * “ Is that yours, then ? they answered, making salaams in the Russian style, “The Czar did me the honor.” The whole scene is almost impossible of reproduction in these pages. A Duke of Mecklenburg had married a niece of the Czar’s and the sovereign uncle summoned Duke and Duchess by gracious to wait upon him. The interview is too horribly incredible were it not vouched for beyond contradiction, ihe royal uncle was so powerfully wrought upon by the beauty of his niece that he sprang up, satyr-like, and clasped her in his arms, snatching her into an inner room. Mr. Carlyle tells the story very plainly, though he confesses “it is too oamoeidic for human speech,” With such an ancestor—who is after all the noblest ngure in Russian history—Alexander can probably soothe his conscience by the reflection that the family morals have steadily improved, though he has failed to

bring them in his own person to an immaculate perfection. The following are the charges preferred against him by the correspondent referred to : “ The present Emperor had three mistresses acknowledged in the course of his life, and all the three were Princesses Dolgorouky. The first of them, being a woman of superior abilities and intellect, bad a great and beneficial influence over the Emperor in the first period of his reign, and many of the best reforms introduced in Russia at that time—chiefly the emancipation of the peasants—are universally attributed to her influence. The said Princes Dolgorouky behaved extremely well, never boasted of her influence over the Czar, and was subsequently married to Count Albedinsky. To her succeeded her niece, another Princess Dolgorouky, and was in the course of time—some seven years ago—replaced by her own sister, the present favorite, who by no means follows the example of her distinguished aunt. She has three children from the Czar, the last of whom was born quite lately at Talta, in the Crimea. She does not make any mystery whatever of her relations to the sovereign, and acknowledges her children in an open way, taking them with herself every time she drove out in company with the Emperor in the Crimea. She is, moreover always intruding on the privacy of the Empress, trying to annoy her as much'as possible. The Empress could not of course, patiently bear the presence of that woman in her immediate surrounding but was unable to get rid of her ; the Cezarewna, however, managed the matter in a more resolute manner and positively shut her doors to the obtrusive beauty. As to the Czar, he is so much taken up by his favorite that he allows her to do very much as she pleases. The Princess Dolgorouky has set the family of the heir apparent against her. The Czarewitch himself is by no means a man to overlook such scandals. It is a matter upon which he is most severe, even in his relations to his uncles and brothers, setting himself with his consort the example of a simple and faultless family life. But besides all above stated the Princess Dolgorouky enjoys the worst possible reputation among the less scrupulous part of society, as it is a wellknown fact that she is bribed by many financial people here, and uses her influence over the Emperor in order to make him grant financial concessions to the gentlemen who offer her the largest sum of money. The Princess Dolgorouky is as yet only twenty-four years old, and the Emperor is so much taken by her that the opinion prevails in the Court circles of St. Petersburg to the effect that, as soon as the Empress dies, the Czar will contract a morganatic marriage with the Princess. But I give you that last information with all reserve, as nobody can, of course, sound the mind of the Czar upon such a delicate matter, his present wife being alive as yet. “The health of the Empress has been in a very bad condition for the last few years • but during her stay in the Crimea her illness was greatly increased by the moral shock which she experienced at the undisguised misdemeanor of the Princess Dolgorouky, who resided also at Talta, drove often with the Emperor, followed him everywhere, and tried to play the part of an absolute Empress on her own account. The scandal of such conduct became unbearable at last; the Empress eft Livadia quite suddenly and resorted to Tugenheim, and thence to Cannes for the winter. The local papers are prevented from issuing any news concerning the precarious state of the Empress as yet; but now she grows worse so rapidly that her chief medical adviser, Professor Botkin, has been telegraphed for, and was obliged to hurry on immediately to Cannes. There were rumors afloat about the intention of the Emperor to go to Cannes also, but the fact is not certain as yet; of course it would be only proper for him to join the Empress who was so devoted so him during all her life, but, besides his acknowledged unwillingness to leave the Princess Dolgorouky even for a time, there is great apprehension here as to his exposing his life in foreicm countries. °

“ The general condition of things in Russia at present takes a very serious aspect, and becomes complicated to such an extent that you may expect to hear most extraordinary news from that quarter before long. All the particulars stated above cannot fail to excite suspicion, considering the accuracy of facts as stated by me. I allow that they bear some semblance of vulgar slander. But the truth is that since the evident coolness displayed by the family of the Czarewitch toward the Czar and his favorite, all reticence concerning the causes which brought it about has vanished m Russian society—everybody now has something to say on the topic which was widely known but generally avoided until lately out of a certain regard for the unhappy Empress and the children of the Czar. But, now that the Czar is acting in such an open manner, the matter is freely discussed, and, I may Bay , condemned by everyone save the personal friends of the Princess Dolgorouky and such of the Ministers whose chief object it is to divert the attention of the Emperor from the dangerous condition of the country, and to indulge his whims m order to retain as long as possible their position and their mischievous power over the nation. The ambition of the yonng Princess does not go so far as to induce e r , use er influence in the direction of the general policy of the Empire ; she is satisfied as yet with the gold that is streaming into her lap from all sides, and seems to be sincerely contented with the position she enjoys in some of the less sgfapulous circles of the Court.”