Alexander II, his father, fled to Livadia every winter for two or three months for relaxation from the stern and tragic life he was compelled to lead. The present czar has spent his happiest days there, also, and during his childhood was brought every winter to escape the arctic climate of St. Petersburg, with his governesses and tutors, and the rooms which he and his brothers occupied remain very much as they were in those days. They open immediately off a small hallway in the centre of the cottage on the ground floor, and the windows, which are only breast high from the lawn, overlook the garden. They are small and cosy, but very plain. Boyish traps are still hanging on the walls; tennis rackets, fencing foils and masks and rubber-soled canvas shoes.
There is an ordinary hat rack, a table and two plain chairs in the entrance hall. Two or three hats that belonged to Alexander III still remain where he hung them when he wore them last. The children's schoolroom and the bedrooms of the boys occupy one half of the ground tfoor. On the opposite side is a dining-room, a very plain apartment, with a polished floor and a rug and sideboards, carving tables, high-backed mahogany chairs and a table that will seat twenty.
Back of the dining-room is the kitchen, and over it, on the second floor, is the drawing-room with handsome and tasteful but inexpensive furniture. There is a grand piano, a Swiss music box, upon a stand in the corner; a collection of fans and other feminine trifles in a cabinet; several presentation books and albums, and rather ordinary paintings upon the walls.
There is a suite of three rooms for the emperor and a corresponding suite for the empress. Her sitting-room is very pretty, with a Brussels carpet on the floor and hangings and upholstery of cretonne. Her bedroom is furnished with the same material and is similar to those you can find in every country-house of well-to-do people and much more convenient than any palace apartment I have ever seen. The bedstead is of brass with a canopy and curtains of cretonne. Between the sitting-room and the bedroom is a dressing-room, with several large wardrobes and a storeroom for linen with chests of drawers.
The czar's library contains two desks of plain, ordinary white oak, one for himself and one for his secretary or military aide. It is furnished with substantial leather tufted furniture, cretonne hangings and an ordinary Brussels carpet upon the floor, while the walls are hung with family photographs, including a group taken on the front porch of the cottage when the late King Christian, Queen Alexandra of England, King George of Greece and other relatives of the Dowager Empress were there. There are several photographs of Queen Alexandra of England and King George of Greece about the house. The affection and devotion for which the royal family of Denmark is famous is illustrated by the niunber of photographs that are scattered around.
The czar's sleeping chamber is a large, square room with an outlook upon the Black Sea. It is left exactly as it was when he died. His bed, a large four-poster with two mattresses, is shielded from the light by a high screen.
and beside it is a small iron camp bedstead that was used by his nurse. In the corner is a cabinet bathtub, which closes up like a settee; in the centre is a table, with several Russian books, reviews and newspapers — the last he read. There is a sofa behind it with a pillow embroidered with the imperial arms, where he rested in his last days. Beside one window is a large easy chair, in tufted blue leather, much worn, and rather shabby, in which Alexander III sat when he breathed his last. He died of a combination of Bright's disease and dropsy, and his lungs and heart were drowned. For several days before his death he was imable to lie down, and slept in this chair. It stands exactly where it was when he died, and where his feet rested a cross of olive-wood has been embedded in the floor.
The rooms of Alexander II in the winter palace at St. Petersburg and those of Nicholas I, the iron czar, are preserved in the same way, and will never be occupied again. But no emperor ever died in such simple, homelike surroundings as Alexander III.
The widow has never been there since she left for St. Petersburg with the funeral cortege, but Nicholas II, the son,^always spends a portion of the year in Livadia, usually three months in the fall. The old vine-covered villa, which has been photographed and used as an illustration for books and magazines so often, has been torn down, and a splendid palace of white sandstone, to cost $750,000, has been constructed on plans prepared by Architect ICrasnoflF of Yalta.