IN RUSSIA

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 4 August 1917, Page 3

IN RUSSIA

THE LONELY CZARINA.

WOMEN OF HER COURT. DUCHESSES AND MUSICIANS. London, May 17. In her forced retirement the ex-Czar-ina of Russia is living a very lonely life indeed. In the days of her greatness —days undimmed as yet in the distance—she had but few real friends. To-day she lias none. Morbidly shy, fearful of revolution often in bad health she practically lived the life of a recluse. For ten years there were no receptions at court, and during that time the Czarina only attended one function —a dance given in honour of her eldest daughter—and even then she only stayed for an hour, She never attempted to gain popularity with her husband’s subjects, to whom she was always the “German, ’ just as Marie Antoinette was always “the Austrian” to the French. For years there existed a coldness, often on active feud between the exCzarina and her mother-in-law. Family relations were indeed habitually strained. The saner members of the Imperial family dreaded the Carina’s influence over her husband, and complications were added by her studied hostility to many of them, particularly to the Grand Duchess Victoria, wife of the Grand Duke Cyril, the Czar’s cousin. The Grand Duchess is the daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, and was first married to the Grand Duke of Hesse, the Czarina’s brother, an unpleasant person, from whom she obtained a divorce.

It lias been authoratively suggested that it was the Czarina’s sister, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, who first turned her mind towards mysticism. Since her husband's assassination the Grand Duchess has devoted herself to religious work, but she appears to have thoroughly understood the malevolence of Easputin and similar impostors, and to have tried to opened her sister’s eyes.

Easputin is generally supposed to have been introduced to the Czarina by Mme_ Wyrouboff, the one friend she had, and for years the dominant ?nfluencc at the Imperial court.,Mme. Wyrouboff is the daughter of a music master, and a mutual love of music was her first bond with her royal mistress. She is regarded as one of the people responsible for the Eomanoffs’ undoing and the revolutionaries have certainly not allowed her to share her mistress’s imprisonment.