“The Lady of Tears”—Tragic European Figure

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 276, 11 February 1928, Page 24

“The Lady of Tears” —Tragic European Figure

The claim that a daughter of the. murdered Tsar has been discovered lends interest to this pen-picture of the pathetic Dowager-Empress of Russia, Marie F'edorovna. now spending the evening of her life in Denmark. ■ HILE the Bolsheviki in . Russia are celebrating . the tenth anniversary of the revolution, Marie Feodorovna, the former Dowager Empress of All the Russias, perhaps the most tragic of all the Queens in exile, lives on quietly in her modest country villa near Copenhagen. The “Lady of Tears’* will not believe that her son. Tsar Nicholas 11., is dead. Through the crash of an empire, the red thunders of revolution and long years of expatriation, Marie Feodorovna has clung to the hope that the last of the Romanoffs is still a prisoner somewhere in the wilds of Russia. She cannot bring herself to admit that he perished with his family in a dark cellar in Ekaterinburg. Always she has maintained this faith and the approach of her 80th birthday, which fell on November 25, found her conviction as strong as ever. It helps, she says, to keep her alive. The "Lady of Tears” remains in her room these days. The daily drive in an automobile, once one of her favourite occupations, has been given up, for it is too great a strain on her strength. Dignified as ever, she is the idol of her refugee fellow-country-men, who look upon her as the symbol of all that was noble and magnificent in the Russia they knew. The priceless crown she wore when Tsarina is guarded by the Soviet; the armies that saluted the Empress are scattered; the court she ruled over is gone. Yet Marie Feodorovna, the daughter of a King, wife of a Tsar and mother of a Tsar, has held her white head high through all her sorrows—• dauntless and unshaken. No Prayers for Tsar She allows no prayers to be said in her household for the repose of the soul of the Tsar Nicholas. Her son, some day, will return to her, she insists. When the Grand Duke Cyril three years ago proclaimed himself Tsar of Russia, the exiled Dowager Empress refused to recognise his claim. “My heart was painfully depressed,” she wrote to the Grand Duke Nicholas. “Nobody is in a post-

tion to deprive me of the last gleam of hope.” Night after night from the window of her Crimean refuge, while the revolution raged and the whole world was horror-struck by news of the murder of the Tsar, the beams of a lamp shone out into the night. “It is for my son,” she said. “It will show him I am still awaiting his return.” Marie Feodorovna is well named the “Lady of Tears.” The daughter of King Christian IX., of Denmark, she became engaged to the'Tsarevitch Nicholas of Russia, but the match was never accomplished. One* day saw her rushing to the bedside of her dying fiance at Nice. She arrived just in time to grant him his deathbed wish that she should marry his brother. Already tragedy had marked her. Within the year, on October 26, 1866, in the glittering Chapel Royal of the Winter Palace, the Princess Dagmar of Denmark became Marie Feodorovna, bride of the Tsarevitch Alexander.

The blast of a Nihilist bomb in the streets of the capital made Marie Feodorovna the Tsarina of Russia. Alexander 11. was killed by the explosion and Alexander. 111. succeeded him. With his own hand, in a magnificent ceremony at Moscow, while cannon boomed and bells sang joyfully, he placed on the head of his consort the crown of the Tsarina. Of her two sister Princesses of Denmark, Alexandra became Queen of England and Olga married the Duke of Cumberland. For 13 years peace and tranquillity reigned in the life of the “Lady of Tears.” At the death of Alexander, Nicholas ascended the throne of All the Russias and the days of Marie Feodorovna’s power drew gradually to a close. He had been her favourite son from childhood, willing to take advice based on her long experience, and for a time he continued to place his faith in her. In the end, however, he fell under the spell of a court that, if apparently glittering and powerful, was in reality but a hollow shell. Then Rasputin came to the Winter Palace to wield an uncanny influence over the ruling circles of Russia. The Dowager Empress was forced into the background. War and Revolution War burst on a country ill-prepared to meet the machine-like thrusts of the German Army. On the heels of three years of conflict the revolution stormed down the streets of Petrograd and an empire crumbled into dust. Nicholas abdicated. The entire Royal family was doomed to captivity. Stripped of her palace and her splendour, Marie Feodorovna withdrew with a small group of faithful followers to a haven at Yalta in the Crimea, leaving behind a capital that seethed with the tumult of the mob, tearing: down the last vestiges of an ancient regime. Time and again it was urged upon the Dowager Empress that she should accept safe conducts either to England, where her sister Alexandra was now the Queen Mother, or to Den mark, the land of her birth. Always she refused to quit Russia as long as her son was “in the hands of the enemy,” together with his wife and children.

It was only when the rout of Wrangel’s army came pouring down through the Crimea pursued by the j victorious Reds that the dauntless Marie Feodorovna was persuaded to i go aboard a British vessel, anchored off Yalta, which conveyed her to Con-1 stantinople. Cherishing continually ; her faith in the return of Nicholas, she arrived in England, where, at i Sandringham, she found a home awaiting her with the Queen Mother Alexandra. For a while she stayed in England. Then memories of her native land summoned her to Denmark and the protection of the Villa Hvidoere. Refugees of the Russian aristocracy came in crowds to see their former Dowager Empress and she received them with matchless dignity. Toward Soviet Russia she maintains to this day an enduring enmity, for Marie Feodorovna can never forget what she suffered at its hands. Once, it is said, she informed the Crimean Soviet that her pitiful allowance of 100 rubles a month was not sufficient. “We need a clerk,” was the curt reply.- “If you want extra money you might apply for the position.” Five years ago Europe was astonished to hear that she had refused to grant an audience to King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, who had motored out to her home with the King of Denmark. The door of Villa Hvidoere remained closed. The King pf Italy had entertained Tchitcherin, the Soviet envoy, as his guest, and therefore the proud one-time Dowager Empress of Russia would not see him. So now the “Lady of Tears” dwells in seclusion, ministered to by faithful attendants, one of the most pathetic figures in Europe. For nine years she has kept one beacon shining amid the wreckage of her life and her empire—the faith that her son Nicholas, will some day come back to her.