As a child Elena was always lively and active. In America she would have been called a “tomboy,” for she preferred the company of her brothers to that of her sisters and it was through the pains of two of them—Danilo and Mirko—that she became expert with the rifle and rod, a familiar horsewoman, and so able a walker and climber.
The spirit of Elena was wild and free. She loved fresh air, a mad scamper over the hills, an adventure that savoured of danger. Encouraged by her father and brothers to all activities in the open she developed into a strong, stalwart girl and later into the Amazonian woman she is to-day. Long after her marriage she retained the fresh and breezy way acquired in girlhood.
An important influence in Elena’s early life were the grandfather’s tales she listened to round the great fire in her homely Palace home. Montenegro, like all older mountain countries, has a folk tale and a legend associated with every crag and valley. Elena heard from her veteran grandfather how the Montenegran people battled with the Turks, and her little heart would fairly quiver with the heroic deeds of valour that the old man would relate of the stormy days when the Balkan peninsula was like a great seething cauldron, and men, and the women too, came down from the mountain fastnesses in their quaint and rude attire to fight the trained troops of European armies. Thus was her child’s imagination fired, and love and pride of country aroused.
One day little Elena brought her father some sheets of paper upon which were drawn some strange pictures. The Prince held the sheets upside down at first, trying to make out what his little daughter had brought him. Elena was much hurt at this and she could hardly keep back the tears. But when the Prince turned the papers round the right way he quickly made out, under her guidance, the house and the mountain, and the dog chasing the sheep. Indeed, he admired not a little this first artistic effort of Elena’s, and right there and then he sat down with her and together they drew the pictures all over again, only this time much better as Elena herself realised. This was the little Princess’s first drawing lesson. After that Elena had a drawing lesson every day. She soon showed signs of a distinct talent in this direction and by the time she was ten years old she had not only conquered the first principles of drawing but she had also made considerable progress in the use of water colours. This talent Elena continued to develop, and with what success may be judged from the fact that when she was still a girl in her teens she became a kind of unofficial “Minister of Fine Arts” in her father’s cabinet. She was instrumental in bringing art exhibits into Montenegro, in organising drawing and painting classes in the public schools and thus for the first time bringing the refining and civilising influence of art culture to her people. She even inaugurated scholarships to encourage art students, and to-day Montenegro has a number of ambitious painters who are actually building up a school of art of their own. Influenced by the picturesque barrenness of their native mountains, together with the gorgeous skies and brilliant atmospheres, they are developing an individual and nationalist school. To this day, Queen Elena retains her interest in the native Montenegran artists, and also in her own drawing and painting. In the Quirinal Palace in Rome she has a studio, where of an afternoon she may frequently be found spending an hour at her easel. It is her custom each Christmas to send as gifts to her more intimate friends sketches and little water colours of her own handiwork.
Elena had other tutors than her father and grandfather, however. From a young child she had a Swiss governess who was her daily companion, and who instructed her in French, and supplemented the teaching of her father in the other branches. It is thus the training of Elena from childhood was the training not only of a Princess but of one who might easily assume the duties and obligations of a Queen. It is not likely that the little Elena ever dared to dream of what her future might be or that her imaginings ever pictured that in womanhood she might occupy a throne as the consort of the King of a great nation, but her father is one of the most astute statesmen in Europe, and with all his children he arranged their education so that they might be acceptable to any high niche in life to which destiny might call them.
CHAPTER II
THE ROMANCE
When Elena was twelve years old an important change came into her life. She was sent away to St. Petersburg to enter the most wonderful school of its kind in the world. This was the famous, glorified boarding school for the daughters of the nobility which for many years has been patronised by the Empress Marie Feodorovna, wife of Tsar Alexander III and mother of the present Emperor, Nicholas II. Fancy a girls’ school where every pupil is a little Countess or Princess or Grand Duchess! In Russia the family titles usually descend to the children, so that this is no exaggeration. This school corresponds to one which exists for boys known as the Corps des Pages—or school of pages. The young sons of the nobility are sent here at an early age and are commonly spoken of as pages of the courts. Most of the boys who go to this school become officers and generally are assigned to the crack regiments which guard the persons of the sovereigns. As a rule only native Russians are admitted to these two exclusive schools, but the daughters of Prince Nicholas were easily granted place, because they were the daughters of a ruling Prince, and also because they had the rare advantage among non-Russians of already knowing Russian, or at least the Slav tongue which is very similar to Russian.
For six winters Elena continued at this school, and on her way to and from the northland capital she was taken to visit many of the famous art galleries of Europe. In St. Petersburg she had the privilege of the Hermitage Gallery, where is one of the foremost art collections in Europe, and in Dresden and Munich she became yet more widely acquainted with the masterpieces of the world’s art. Thus was her fondness for art gratified, and her general education broadened and enriched.
Another talent that Elena inherited was that of writing poetry. Her father, Nicholas, is a poet of no mean rank. Many of the folk songs of Montenegro which mothers croon to their babes at night, which shepherds in their lonely huts far up the mountain sides sing to give them cheer when fierce storms are sweeping over their steep pastures, were written by the Prince when he was a young man and during the forty years of his reign they have become so universal that already they are classic. Once indeed he wrote a very long poetic and romantic drama called “An Empress of the Balkans,” which his son, Mirko, Elena’s oldest brother, set to music. And this poetic instinct which her father has made such good use of in endearing himself to his people, is also strong in Elena. For some reason, however, Elena has never been so proud of this talent as of her painting. Nevertheless she has published minor verse from time to time, and as one member of her suite told me once: “She writes still—but she does not own it.”
Curiously enough she once wrote a sonnet to Venice, which she called a “city of poetry, love and feeling.” This sonnet was published in a school magazine, and was written before she had ever visited the romantic city of islands. It was in this same Venice that she later met the Prince who was to make her a Queen, and where the love story of her life began.