Retirement
The grand duke’s retirement allowed him to focus solely on his passion for horses. Dimitri Constantinovich created a model equestrian center, the Dubrovsky Stud farm, outside the Village of Mirgord, in the Poltava province. In 1911, Dimitri became president of the Imperial Society of Horse Racing, and was named Honorary president of the Russian society of Care and Protection of Animals. In the autumn of 1913, he inaugurated the Russian Imperial Horse Exposition in Kiev, and the first Russian Sport Competition, a kind of Slavic Olympic Games.
With time, the grand duke frequently retreated to Crimea, where he enjoyed the last, carefree days of the Romanov Dynasty along the Black sea shores. In 1907 he purchased a small plot of land at Gaspara in the Crimea, the following year he commissioned the construction of Kichkine, from the Tartar word “tiny Jewel”. The villa was designed in Moorish style and built with local whitewashed stone. Here the grand duke and his guest spent many pleasant evenings watching the sunset over the Black Sea, unaware that the sun was also setting over their privileged way of life.
Dimitri’s mother died in 1911, at her funeral the grand duke’s poor eyesight became the source of temporary mirth. At the end of the ceremony when he tried to kiss the icon his mother held in her hands. Unable to see clearly, he misjudged distance and, bending forward to make his farewell, missed the open coffin completely, tumbling off the steps with a loud crash as his ceremonial saber and medals struck the stone floor. Relatives rushed to his side, but the grand duke appeared unfazed and went on as though nothing had happened.
Read more about this topic: Grand Duke Dimitri Constantinovich Of Russia
Famous quotes containing the word retirement:
“The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“Adultery itself in its principle is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envy of another man’s enclosed pleasures: and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor.”
—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)