Author Topic: Letter during engagement  (Read 4502 times)

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Offline Queen_Missy

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Letter during engagement
« on: October 08, 2015, 11:16:13 PM »
Does anyone know what is being refered to in these letters? They are quoted in "A lifelong Passion" on pages 61 and 63 and in "king, Kaiser and Tsar" and "The Last Tsarina". Dates are in old style.

From Nicholas April 23 1894 "...I see my sweet girly-dear looking back at me, sometimes with a sly look, which makes me think of a certain house on the road from Coburg to Ketchendorf on the left!!!"

From Alix April 26 1894
"You naughty thing, how dare you say that about the sly look and the house on the left! Be ashamed of yourself, I wish I were there to pinch you for it."

What happened in that "house on the left?" In "the last Tsarina" it said "they shared an erotic interlude". Alix was a virgin when they married wasn't she?

Offline Ally Kumari

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Re: Letter during engagement
« Reply #1 on: October 09, 2015, 03:42:28 AM »
I´m sure she was a virgin upon marriage, but there are other things quite intimate that two people in love, when in private, can engage in. Furthermore this was the prudent Victorian England - and a Princess that was its product - so a passionate kiss without anyone looking may be considered "naughty" enough.

I think that "erotic interlude" triggers in our modern minds something much more serious than it would mean back then.

Offline Превед

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Re: Letter during engagement
« Reply #2 on: October 09, 2015, 04:59:19 AM »
I think that "erotic interlude" triggers in our modern minds something much more serious than it would mean back then.
Yes. Perhaps a passionate kiss with some heavy petting?

What happened in that "house on the left?" In "the last Tsarina" it said "they shared an erotic interlude". Alix was a virgin when they married wasn't she?
Not likely that it happened in the house, unless it was a barn, stable, shed or something like that were they sought refuge / privacy. They are not the kind of people who would have rented a room in some sleazy pimp or madam's den. More likely that it happened in the carriage when they passed that house.

BTW the Coburg suburb Ketschendorf (NB Nicholas spells it wrongly) had naughty associations: Although the castle there had been the summer retreat and widow seat of Alix's great great grandmother Duchess Auguste of S-C-G, it had more recently rebuilt by the opera singer Rosine Stoltz, who was a mistress of Alix's grand-uncle Duke Ernst II, who had made her Baroness of Ketschendorf and gave her the castle. Her son Baron Charles of Ketschendorf may have been fathered by Ernst II, although his mother claimed Napoleon III was the father, and he would thus have been Alix's mother's first cousin.

In 1894 the Baroness had sold the castle and it was owned by the Jewish corn merchant and likewise recently ennobled Baron von Mayer.

Schloss Ketschendorf:

« Last Edit: October 09, 2015, 05:02:56 AM by Превед »
Берёзы севера мне милы,—
Их грустный, опущённый вид,
Как речь безмолвная могилы,
Горячку сердца холодит.

(Афанасий Фет: «Ивы и берёзы», 1843 / 1856)