Romanov family

“ In April a flash of the brutal Romanoff temper lit Moscow once more. Alexis Dolgoruki and his family were arrested and convicted of causing the death of the late Tsar. The aged father went to Siberia, the younger men were knouted and exiled, and the young Catherine, the betrothed of Peter II, was, with a refinement of cruelty, sent to the very spot in the frozen north where Menshikoff’s daughter, the earlier aspirant to the crown, had lamented her bitter disappointment. The great proud family was shattered to atoms. ”

“ With something akin to remorse and shame, Romashov learned more of Khliabnikov’s sad conditions of life and family circumstances. At home lived his mother, his father—a confirmed drunkard—a semi-idiotic brother, and four young sisters. The family’s little plot of land had been confiscated, contrary to all law and justice, by the commune, which afterwards was kind enough to shelter the poor wretches in a miserable hut. The elder members were journeymen employed by strange and occasional employers, the younger ones went out to beg. ”

“ Whatever Ramouna's earlier love for Roland had been, it had evidently long ceased, in the thorough want of sympathy between them, and in that absence which, if it renews a strong affection, destroys an affection already weakened. But the mother and son adored each other with all the strength of their strong, wild natures. Even under ordinary circumstances the father's influence over a boy yet in childhood is exerted in vain if the mother lend herself to baffle it. ”

“ The Romanoff family seemed to be an especial source of danger, and the chief representative of that family, Feodor Romanoff, was thrust into a monastery and buried under the monkish title of Philaret. His wife was compelled to enter a nunnery and assume the name of Marfa.
The scattered feeling of discontent at length gathered round the person of a singular adventurer. In the summer of 1604 the news spread through Russia that Dmitri, the third son of Ivan the Terrible, was not dead, but was approaching Moscow with a Polish army to oust the usurper and put an end to their miseries. ”

“ He was as lonely in the world as a man swimming in the deep sea. The word Razumov was the mere label of a solitary individuality. There were no Razumovs belonging to him anywhere. His closest parentage was defined in the statement that he was a Russian. Whatever good he expected from life would be given to or withheld from his hopes by that connexion alone. This immense parentage suffered from the throes of internal dissensions, and he shrank mentally from the fray as a good-natured man may shrink from taking definite sides in a violent family quarrel. ”

“ Consequently the description of the Government of Russia as 'despotism tempered by assassination' is not so very far from the truth.
"It is sometimes said that the Romanoff family is more German than Russian, in consequence of the marriages of the emperors with German princesses. Peter the Great was pure Russian; his son Alexis, father of Peter II., married a German princess, and their daughter Anne married a German duke. Anne and the German duke were the parents of Peter III., the husband of Catherine II. ”

“ Though the dearest and most intimate bond of our family circle has been severed, a still stronger tie unites us now with our greater family, the Roumanian nation, which joins with us in mourning the loss of our and their child. ”

“ Romulus talked the matter over seriously with the fathers of the colony. If these men were to settle down as citizens, taking part in the life of the city—and some of them wished to do so—they ought to have homes; they needed wives. The family life of this people was the very heart of their religion and their society. The father was high priest in his family. The public worship was only a greater family worship, in which all had a part, old and young, living and dead. The gods themselves were often present unseen to receive prayers and offerings,—so the people believed. ”

“ Felipe thinks that it is not worth while to attempt to bring you to reason in that way; and we shall therefore do nothing. I wish to impress it upon you that my son, as head of this house, and I, as my sister's representative, consider you a member of our own family. So long as we have a home for ourselves, that home is yours, as it always has been. If you choose to leave it, and to disgrace yourself and us by marrying an Indian, we cannot help ourselves.”
The Señora paused. Ramona did not speak. Her eyes were fixed on the Señora's face, as if she would penetrate to her inmost soul ”

“ Under a system of male kinship the union of the king with a slave woman would give birth to a Servius Tullius, and, according to one tradition, to a Romulus. If female kinship prevailed in the royal family, as we have seen reason to suppose, it is possible that the stories of the birth of Romulus and 313Servius from slave mothers is a later inversion of the facts, and that what really happened was that some of the old Latin kings were begotten by slave fathers on royal princesses at the festival of the Saturnalia. ”

“ There is no reason to suppose that the lifelong separation which followed was premeditated on either side; and the strictures of Hayley and others on Romney for his ‘desertion’ of his family are largely discounted by the facts that neither wife nor son ever showed the least resentment or sense of injury, and that John Romney's ‘Life’ is, in the main, a spirited justification of his father's conduct. John Romney was devoted to his mother, and would hardly have condoned anything like ill-treatment of her. As he grew to manhood he seems to have divided his time between his parents. ”

“ The Romanovs suffered heavily in the disorders following on the death of Ivan. Some were executed and others exiled. Nikita's son Feodor (the archimandrite Philaret) was banished, but was recalled by the false Demetrius. In 1610 he was imprisoned by the king of Poland, but his piety and virtues led to the election of his son, Mikhail Feodorovich Romanov, to the throne of the tsars in 1613. Philaret became patriarch of Moscow in 1619, and supported his son's government until his death in 1634. Mikhail was seventeen when he began his reign, and died in 1645. ”

“ The old woman, Marion Morrison, with her bonny May, were likewise taken home to the same hospitable dwelling, till some arrangement could be made, with the generous and noble-minded family of Hopetoun, for their future accommodation. Mr Robert Ramsay was a young, unmarried man of family—as his name implies—and he felt the impropriety of keeping a young, unmarried woman under his roof. ”

“ The man was a self-seeker; he saw in the captivity of the Romanovs an opportunity to advance his own and his son’s interests. He indulged in all manner of demonstrations of “loyalty”—bell-ring{372}ing and prayers—without regard to their effect upon the captives and their gaolers. As a matter of fact, they did much harm to the family.
The accusation brought against him by Soloviev appears to be borne out in part by the discovery of a certain quantity of articles belonging to the Imperial family in his (Vasiliev’s) house. ”

“ He spoke in so serious a tone, his face expressed so much anxiety, that Raymond was deeply impressed. He thought that probably these "Mémoires of Frédet" had started one of those disagreements between relatives that sometimes prevent for many years the publication of books of this sort.
"If you are so bent upon it," replied his comrade, "I shall try to find out. I am lunching to-day with one of my cousins, who belongs to all the clubs and has Paris at his fingers' ends. If your Duchesse d'Ivrea broke with her family for any reasons that have been talked about, my cousin will know them. ”

“ It is a much more extended group than the modern family, embracing under the headship of the eldest valid male parent all agnatic descendants and all persons united to it by adoption, as well as slaves, clients, and other dependents. [12] The power of the house-father is most despotic, though exercised during his entire lifetime over the unmarried daughters and over even the married sons and their wives and children. Thus originally, it is said, the Roman pater familias has power of life and death, vita necisque, over his children. ”

“ She has seen it, and has felt it, and has come to love him with all her soul, just as I hope some woman will love me one of these days. If I am ever loved as well as she loves Alessandro, I shall be lucky. I think they ought to be married; and I think we ought to take Alessandro on to the estate, so that they can live here. I don't see anything disgraceful in it, nor anything wrong, nor anything but what was perfectly natural. You know, mother, it isn't as if Ramona really belonged to our family; you know she is half Indian.” A scornful ejaculation from his mother interrupted him here ”

“ The Russian family is not identical with the Roman family, in which the pater-familias was absolute master, or of any of its derivatives. It is a union of individuals having their individual rights recognized by the law, though sometimes not without certain limitations in favor of the head of the family. It is a perfect communistic commonwealth. All the movables belonging to the household, as well as its whole income, constitute the collective property of the family, but not of its head. The old Russian family resembled a community even in the number of its members. ”

“ In Russia the so-called large family appears as a much less extensive application of the same idea. It extends rarely over more than three generations, but even as a cluster of members gathering around a grandfather or a great-uncle it presents an arrangement which hampers greatly private enterprise and staves off succession until the moment when the great household breaks up between the descendants of a great-grandfather.
In Germanic law we catch a glimpse of a state of things in which side relations were not admitted to succession at all. ”

“ An old Indian woman, the same whose house they had hired in Saboba, had come up to live with Ramona. She was friendless now, her daughter having died, and she thankfully came to be as a mother to Ramona. She was ignorant and feeble but Ramona saw in her always the picture of what her own mother might perchance be, wandering, suffering, she knew not what or where; and her yearning, filial instinct found sad pleasure in caring for this lonely, childless, aged one.
Ramona was alone with her on the mountain at the time of the baby's birth. Alessandro had gone to the valley, to be gone two days ”

“ And don’t you notice it yourself, uncle, that Elisaveta has poisoned herself with this sweet poison, and has become terribly passionate and insufficiently modest?”
“I do not find this at all,” said Rameyev dryly.
“She is in love—so what’s to be done? If there is sensuality in people, what is to be done with nature? Shall the whole world be maimed in order to gratify a decrepit morality?”
“Uncle, I did not suspect you of being such an amoralist,” said Piotr in vexation. ”

“ Marry Mlle. Ramon, and our future is assured. We will go to Dreux to live. The house is large enough for us all. Ramon will give his daughter no dowry, but we are to live with him, that is decided, and he will procure you a lucrative situation. When your father-in-law dies, you will come into a handsome fortune. Louis, my son, my beloved son," added the old man, imploringly, seizing his son's hands, "consent to this marriage, I beg of you. ”

“ The following report of the proceedings is taken from the Bolshevist paper Pravda:—
“‘The Revolutionary Tribunal has considered the case of the murder of the late Tsar Nicholas Romanov, his wife, the Princess of Hesse, their daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, and{329} their suite. In all eleven persons were assassinated. Of the twenty-eight persons accused three were members of the Ekaterinburg Soviet—Grusinov, Yakhontov, and Malutin; among the accused were also two women, Maria Apraksina and Elizaveta Mironova. ”

“ Razumov, motionless in sombre wonder, listened to the sobs.
The other raised his head, got up and with an effort mastered his voice.
“Yes. Men like me leave no posterity,” he repeated in a subdued tone, “I have a sister though. She’s with my old mother—I persuaded them to go abroad this year—thank God. Not a bad little girl my sister. She has the most trustful eyes of any human being that ever walked this earth. She will marry well, I hope. She may have children—sons perhaps. Look at me. My father was a Government official in the provinces, He had a little land too. ”

“ Heartily as the kindly people rejoiced in her having found such a protector for herself and her child, and deeply as they felt Felipe's and Aunt Ri's good-will and gratitude towards them, they were yet conscious of a loss,—of a void. The gulf between them and the rest of the world seemed defined anew, their sense of isolation deepened, their hopeless poverty emphasized. Ramona, wife of Alessandro, had been as their sister,—one of them ”

“ Say I will be her daughter if she will let me.”
“It must be the Virgin herself that is teaching Majella what to say,” thought Alessandro, as he repeated this in the San Luiseno tongue.
Again the women murmured pleasure, but the old woman spoke not. “And say that you will be her son,” added Ramona.
Alessandro said it. It was perhaps for this that the old woman had waited. Lifting up her arm, like a sibyl, she said: “It is well; I am your mother. The winds of the valley shall love you, and the grass shall dance when you come. The daughter looks on her mother's face each day. I will go;” ”