Source:
The St. Paul Globe, published in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 15, 1904
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn90059523/1904-05-15/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1894&sort=relevance&rows=20&words=Czarina&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=18&state=&date2=1918&proxtext=Czarina&y=14&x=13&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=5
The article:
THE CZARINA'S OWN LITTLE WAR
THE Beautiful Woman Who Sits on Russia's Throne Suffers From Too Much Mother-in-Law and Declines to Submit
THE Czar's Mother and His Wife Fail to Agree on Many Points, and Their Differences Cannot Be Reconciled
THE Czarina has a little war of her own which has been raging for several years. She suffers from too much mother-in-law. That is what the St. Petersburg gossips said last autumn when the Empress retired to the country, officially to nurse a bad attack of earache. There was a general smiling and raising of eyebrows in court circles when the country visit was announced.
The Dowager Empress Is One of the Cleverest of Women.
"It is a plausible excuse, of course," said a Russian lady to an American woman, who was at that time visiting St. Petersburg, "but in spite of the almost sacred seclusion in which our royal family live and the admirable police protection they enjoy, rumor cannot be stifled. For some years we have all been aware that the Dowager Empress and her pale, proud, beautiful daughter-in-law are not as friendly as they might be.
"The trouble began as long ago as the first year of the Emperor's marriage, which was carried out wholly at the suggestion of his mother, who is one of the cleverest, most capable, managing and ambitious women in Europe. She is the true daughter of her enterprising mother, Queen Louise of Denmark. That lady was chiefly famous as the best butter-maker in Denmark and the best match-maker in the world. Queen Louise married her fourth daughter, Marie Dagmar, to the late Emperor of all the Russias, and never had an occasion to regret her choice of her son-in-law for her favorite child.
Her Beauty and Her Mental Strength Are Both Remarkable.
"The Princess Dagmar, at the time of her marriage, was considered quite as beautiful as her elder sister, who married King Edward. So fair was this Danish princess that when I saw her enter London, in the train of her sister Alexandra, I thought her far more beautiful than the latter. She was tall and slender, her skin was like milk and roses, and her face beamed with intelligence. Furthermore, her manners were the perfection of natural social grace, tact and good will, cultured by the most careful training."
The Russian woman went on to explain that Princess Dagmar was a great success in England. When a little while afterwards her betrothal to the heir of the Russian throne was announced, everybody said that she had a big opportunity and would make the most of it. And that is just what she did. She was baptized into the Russian Church as Marie Feodorovna, and speedily became a true Russian princess.
She set about captivating the heart of her husband and winning his confidence, and she evidently realized both of these ambitions. She also won the people and officials with ease. Every man who met her realized that she combined the brain of a true statesman with all the intuitive delicacy of a woman.
After her first two children were born she lost a great deal of her beauty, but she has retained her fine, slim figure and her clear colour, and when gorgeously dressed for a State function, as she loves to be, she is a dazzling and impressive personage. Her health is superb, and her industry irrepressible. She gets up with the lark, has a sponge bath in ice-cold water, breakfasts, exercises, and then gets to work.
How the Dowager Chose a Wife For Her Son Nicholas.
She loves work, and power and prestige are essential to her happiness. She had complete influence over her husband. He told her everything, took counsel with her before signing State papers or giving an important audience, and brought up his son Nicholas to reverence and obey her opinion as if it were Gospel.
When the question of selecting a wife for Nicholas came uppermost in the minds of the royal pair, it was the Empress who went wife-hunting for her son, and who decided that Princess Alix of Hesse, the niece of her sister, then Princess of Wales, would prove an ideal consort. She talked the matter over with her relatives, and Princess Alix was told of the good match in store for her.
This princess was beautiful, but very impecunious; no other royal gentleman had asked for her hand; and there was much surprise and disgust in her family when at first she declared that the future Czar was not to her liking.
But the Empress of Russia, while thoroughly angry, was none the less determined to have her way. It is said that once her mind is made up she
never changes it. Anyway, the Princess Alix was wedded to the present Czar at the bedside of his dying father. The Empress Dagmar stood by and saw the business carried out, thereby consummating her greatest blunder.
She had supposed that her new daughter-in-law would be like clay in her hands, to be moulded as she chose, and that idea was strengthened by the girl's consent to the marriage. Naturally, the Dowager wished to have a non-entity for her son's wife, so that she might continue to wield her old power and influence. She had passed over other eligible princesses because she had thought they would prove to be dangerous rivals. But, for once in her life, she made a great mistake, which she has often had occasion to regret.
Princess Alix was pretty, even beautiful; she was young and she had not had a very elaborate education; but her mother-in-law did not realize that she possessed a mind of her own. She had had a romance in her teens, a hopeless love affair with a gallant German captain; she hated dress and elaborate etiquette and consequently she came into the formal Russian Court very sore at heart and much injured at having to change her religion.
From the beginning there were good grounds for her disgust with her matrimonial bargain; but gossip says her first contest with her mother-in-law arose over a pair of pearl earrings.
She did not mind at all when the Dowager Empress went on managing the housekeeping affairs of the palace, giving advice on official business to the young Emperor, and generally enjoying all the power and influence she had formerly possessed; but she did seriously object to the Dowager's use of a pair of magnificent pearls that had been purchased by the great Catherine and worn in turn by each Russian Empress.
The young wife of the Czar does not care in the least degree for dress; she wears a plain black cloth suit and a straw sailor hat most of the time, and only puts on a Paris frock when a State ceremony must be endured. She never allows an inch of lace to be used on her underwear, but she has a passion for jewels, and more especially for pearls.
When she was married, it is said that her one consolation in yielding to family persuasion was that she would have the finest jewels in the world, and the most noble string of pearls. With this string of pearls there belonged a pair of ear studs, but when the Romanoff jewels were given into the keeping of the young Empress the ear studs were missing. They were to be plainly seen glistening in the ears of her mother-in-law.
A Battle Royal For a Pair Of Pearl Earrings
For three weeks a struggle for the possession of the pearl studs was carried on. The Empress wished to have them, her mother-in-law wished to keep them. Records were searched, laws examined, precedents cited; the unfortunate Emperor was called upon to decide, and at last the Dowager yielded. The pearls were transferred from her ears to those of her daughter-in-law, and at that moment a covert, but none the less deadly, war was declared between them.
In securing the earrings the young Empress suddenly tasted the sweets of victory and the joys of power. Thereafter the daughter-in-law began to assume many hitherto neglected responsibilities and dignities, and now it is generally admitted that these two ladies pull in diametrically opposite directions and have agreed to disagree.
Their second big difference of opinion arose over the Grand Duchess Olga's morning bath. When the Grand Duchess was three weeks old, and the young mother was up and around, she decided to give her baby its morning bath. Her own mother had washed all the little princes and princesses of Hesse, so the Empress called for a tub, soap, towels and a big flannel apron, and, rolling up her sleeves, gave her little daughter a bath in good style. She then told the nurses that she would do the same every morning.
The Dowager Empress was shocked and disgusted. There was a commotion in the palace, traditions were cited, rules of etiquette discussed, but the young Empress went right on bathing and dressing the Grand Duchess, and the Emperor would not, or could not, say her nay.
Court Gossips Say The Czarina Opposed the War.
After this demonstration of her influence over her husband, the Empress began to take more interest in the affairs of State, and to encourage him to talk things over with her and listen to her advice. Now it is said in court circles that because the Dowager expressed her contempt of the Japanese and her belief that Russia would easily succeed in crushing them, the Empress most earnestly opposed the war.
She has not yet been able to exert the influence in State affairs that her mother-in-law still wields, nor has she been able to get a following in the palace. The officials, the men of the family and the chiefs of the army, who have known the Dowager many years, and who have a profound respect for her grasp of affairs, side with her to a man, while the Empress has only a following among the minor officers, the young men, and all the servants, who like her for her independence, her kind-heartedness, and her scarcely veiled contempt for those antique stumbling blocks in the way of comfort called rules of court etiquette.
The Empress Is Feared for Her Gift of Sarcasm.
But what the Dowager and her friends fear most is the quick and nipping sarcasm of her youthful rival. As a rule, the Czarina is a silent woman, and rarely confidential. She is reserved and melancholy, and she amuses herself chiefly by looking after her young daughter and reading English books. But when she is annoyed, her gray-blue eyes assume a steely glint, her thin lips are pressed together for a moment, and then she retorts in phrases that fly straight at their mark and have a sting.
