I just finished reading the three installments of "The Princess Aline" in Harpers Magazine,Jan, 1895, Feb. 1895, and Mar. 1895. It is a novel about Alexandra who appears in the novel as the young and beautiful Princess Aline, Helene, Victoria, Beatrix de Hohenwald et de Grasse who is on tour in Europe with her brother and sisters. An American portrait painter has fallen in love with a photo of her in an international society magazine and travels 4000 miles to try and meet her and confess his love. The novel is written by the famous journalist and novelist, Richard Harding Davis and illustrated by the even more famous Charles Dana Gibbson who was married to one of Lady Astor's sisters and who was the model for Gibson's famous Gibson Girl. Richard Harding Davis is clearly the model for the American painter in the story and he was also Charles Dana Gibbson's model for the Gibbson man. Gib
I was just wondering if anyone had some more information about it. Gibson did some wonderful drawings of Alexandra for the story and she fits into his ideal of intelligence, wholesome nobility, and beauty perfectly.
I had mentioned the fact that I was reading this story in another discussion and did not have my dates correct so my assumptions that I was drawing were all incorrect as I thought that the story had appeared in 1894 before Alix married Nicky.
Be that as it may, it does give a fascinating glimpse of Alix's impact on international society and how her beauty was celebrated. The one part of my reasoning that can be held in tact is that no one, not even Alix's ravishing sister Ella, ever managed to capture the imagination of a novelist in her own time. The thing that I find so valuable about the story is that there is no "hindsight" reasoning here (I will explain what I mean by that term a little bit later). "The Princess Aline" was so popular that even Queen Victoria read it.
In the last installment, the hero, Morton Carlton, the American portrait painter, has followed Princess Aline and her brother and sisters all the way to Athens.
The brother has promised to introduce Carlton to Princess Aline on several occasions and for one reason or another at the last minute there were complications that prevented it. Carlton has followed the Royals from London to Paris, to Constantinople and finally to Greece where the brother promises that he will introduce his sister to the famous American painter at a ball the King of Greece is giving.
A day or so before the ball, Carlton decides to go sight seeing at the Parthenon and spots Princess Aline stilling on a ruin and looking wistfully into the distance with a note book in her lap and a pencil. He is able to keep the reporters away who have spotted the Princess and she is able to escape without any unpleasantness and passing right in front of Carlton bowed her thanks and dropped her eyes without speaking to him or stopping.
Alone and disappointed yet once again, Carlton muses, "'If that had been any other girl," he thought, "I would have gone up to her and said, "Was that man annoying you?" and she would have said, "Yes, thank you,' or something; and I would have walked along with her until we had come up to her friends, and she would have told them I had been of some slight service to her, and all would have gone well.
"But because she is a Princess she cannot be approached in that way. At least she does not think so, and I have to act as she has been told I should act, and not as I think I should. After all, she is only a very beautiful girl, and she must be very tired of her cousins and grandmothers, and of not being allowed to see any one else. These royalties make a very picturesque show for the rest of us, but indeed it seems rather hard on them.
"A hundred years from now(Mar. 1895) there will be no more kings and queens, and the writers of that day will envy us, just as the writers of this day envy the men who wrote of chivalry and tournaments, and they will have to choose their heroes from bank presidents, and their heroines from lady lawyers and girl politicians and type-writers. What a stupid world it will be then."
Does anyone know anything more about this delightful story and Richard Harding Davis' fascination with Alexandra? I do know that after "The Princess Aline" appeared that Hearst made Davis an offer he could not refuse to cover the Coronation in May 1896 which he did.
That wonderful new memoir by Alexandra's personal Aide posted on the site (I can't think of his name! He was in the service of the GD Paul before he joined the Imperial suite) says in his memoir that during the Coronation the disaster at Khodynka field was not generally known and was not mentioned as a bad omen until many years later. It is that sort of "hindsight reasoning" that historians use all the time and that distorts an accurate view of the time. And Richard Harding Davis seems to corroborate V's point of view by the fact that Richard Harding Davis who was still in Moscow when the disaster happened did not even know that it had occurred. And later, when newspaper men blamed Richard Harding Davis for not covering the disaster he said that he was unaware of it because a rigid censorship had suppressed all news in order not to cast gloom on the remainder of the festivities.
He also said that even the other reporters had not been unable to pierce the censorship. Davis wrote his brother Charley who was American Consul in Florence, "I was disappointed in missing the accident in Moscow, it must have been more terrible than Johnstown."
Well I have gotten a bit off tract here and again want to know if anyone has any more information about "The Princess Aline" and its impact?
thanks Griff
