Alexandr Radayev

Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · Saint Petersburg

"It is remarkable that in a country where white lead and rouge were in universal use among ladies, where a woman will not approach a window to beg alms without rouge, where in the very language the word red is an expression of outstanding beauty and where

Mademoiselle Vorontsova, known in marriage as Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, was the closest friend of Catherine the Great, director of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences and one of the best-educated women of her time. Among the unofficial recollections of Dashkova there is an episode about her marriage that