The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-05-14
THE WAYS OF WOMEN.
A Ruler of Society and a Reporter.
The Russian Great Lady.
From the New York Tribur

! chrOnicled, but who like to appear to shun
publicity, and who also have been rendered
rather shy Of late by much indiscr1m1nate
and unfortunate gossip which has found
its way into print. All the same it was
| very hard on Mr.. X, Young reporter,
after being very fiatteringly invited by a
certain grande dame to call upon her on
the afternoon preceding a grand enter
! tainment to read the list of invited guests
| and see the rooms in their gala dress, to
! be suddenly turned out of doors by that
| lady. Unfortunately for him, he hap
| pened to send in his card while Mrs. A.
was entertaining well-known society
woman in the drawing room-one whom
| she had taken occasion to impress with
| her horror of those impairment
! reporters"
GO, young man - said the lady of the
house, rising up with majestic indigna-
tlon, much to the amusement of her
visitor, and advancing in a queenly man
ner as she spoke. Break stones ~ she
exclaimed fundamentally. DO any
| thing to gain an honest living. but never,
never try TO obtain livelihood by prying
into homes which should be sacred from
the vulgar public and she pointed to
the door. Go, say she continued,
advancing so that the young fellow was
forced to back out in spite of himself
But she hurriedly whispered in the hall
Come back in half an hour and 1 will
show you everything"
And what do you say of the Russian
women of society" they said at the cluo
to the gallant old visiting foreigner, who
had been discussing the fair of many
lands
The strangest thing about them" he
answered, dropping the ash from his
cigar, lis that it isn't possible to discover
In them any of those peculiar Asiatic
traits and characteristics which are for
ever cropping forth among the masculine
element of society in the capital of the
Great White Gar. Nor yet do they
possess much in common with the women
of Western Europe and America. They
constitute a SOFT of race apart, utterly un''
like the women of other natiOnalities, and
aS'Such are strangely interesting AS
general rule they are devoid of beauty,
both as regards face and figure The
majority of them are small in stature.
They do not impress one with a sense of
dignity, majesty or grace, and the insig-
nItlCanCe of their appearance is often &C
cehtuated by their astonishing indiffer-
ence to dress and their disregard of the
most elementary rules of feminine ele-
gance.
And yet I don't know of any woman on
the faceof the globe who exercises a more
potent spell upon man than the peterbour
geOise. 1t is a charm less physical than
intellectual, and her brilliancy is quite
extraordinary. Asiatic women as a rule
are inferior mentally to the men, and ac-
CustOmed to follow in the wake of the
latter But among the upper classes in
Russia. and particularly on the banks of
the Neya, quite the contrary is the case.
There it is the woman who leads. To her
is due most of the initiative. She is the
originator and directing spirit in every
political intrigue. and the predominance
of her influence is apparent in everything.
She possesses that peculiarly feminine
gift of intuition, developed in the highest
degree, and is so clever and perspicaCious
that she puts men altogether in the shade.
1t has always seemed to me as if the
great lady of St. Petersburg had strain
of Tsigane blood in her veins. What it is
that attracts, Captivates, nay even be
witches the men who come into contact
with her, | can't say. 1t is assuredly not
her beauty; and yet, somehow or other,
the charm which she exercises seems to
go to ones brain just like alcohol, and to
put one into a state of fever. Involun-
tallly, and perhaps unConScfOusly, one be-
comes ready to cry and TO laugh at one
and the same moment, the heart beats
faster, the temptation arises to say far
more than is either prudent or discreet.
the nerves become high strung like the
cords of violin and completely at the
mercy of the unlovely siren, and of her
mysterious and almost uncanny power OF
fascination; one feels as if one were under
the influence of hashish. She will laugh
with the merry, weep with the sad, be
as oNtravagantly kindly and generous to
misfortune and misery when they are
brought before her eyes as she is iCily
cold and Indifferent 10 them when they
are at a distance. There is a very &c
centric and cratic tendency in the char
acter of the great Russian lady One
would almost be tempted to believe at
times that she is afflicted with faint Of
insanity, generally latent, but appearing
at the surface at all kinds of unexpected
moments. One never knows for certain
therefore, what a r ussian woman is going
to do, what extravaganza she is about to
perpetrate, and whether she is going to
pursue to the bitter end the object which
she has in view. There is always the pos
sibiIity that at the very last moment,
when on the very eve of attaining her
aim, she may turn aside and entirely
abandon her pursuit in favor of some
thing entirely opposite thereto.
There is, however, one redeeming
quality, in all this: She is never vulgar
or commonplace, no matter what she NAV
DO. Be her birth high or low, she always
remains the great lady. OF all people |
know there is no one who can boast of so
much knowledge of the world and of men
and women ofvarious climes as the Prince
of Wales, who does not conceal, not his
aversion, but his dreG / of the Russian
woman. TEere are several of the latter
conspicuous for the influence which they
have exercised over the greatest states
men OF Europe, whom on these grounds
he has invariably refused to meet One,
whose name occurs to me at the present
moment, is the Princess Lise Trouhetskoi.
She IS without exception the most ugly
woman in Europe, and is absolutely with
out single physical point worth Boosting
Of Her face has always been mon
strously plain, the nose being Just two
holes in the face, the eyes of a washed
out color and wanting in fine form, the
mouth coarse with yellow teeth in de-
tached pegs. Her neck, always thin, has
become with advancing age still more
scraggy than in days of yore, betraying
the ttatness of chest, Notwithstanding the
full bosom obtained by padding Her
arms have ever been mere skewers, and
feet tiat-more like those of a frog than
anything else In spite of all this, by her
wit and the incredible power of fascina-
ton that she seemed to WELD over men.
she has been one of the most victorious
ttirts of her day and still remains so even
as grandmother, bringing men of every
III md f1sfNr1 nag,f-r i