Princess Yolanda, the first born, has colouring and features very like her mother, while Mafalda and Humbert are more like their father.
Queen Elena herself spends a great share of her time with the children, and while they have the usual nurses and governesses, the latter of whom are already teaching the three older children French and English in addition to Italian, Queen Elena perhaps does more with her own hands than any other Queen mother in Europe. For example, she always bathes them, she is present at their supper hour and when they are being made ready for bed; each afternoon she tries to spend two hours with them at their play. Thus their training is very largely in her hands. The children are all very young still, but the two older girls are beginning to appreciate the love and devotion of their mother, for little Mafalda recently remarked to a gentleman of the court: “Mamma is the comfort of everyone in trouble.”
The Queen’s birthday falls on January 8th. The year of the terrible earthquake at Messina Her Majesty returned to Rome from the devastated regions on the eve of her birthday. This year, oppressed by the terrible scenes she had witnessed, she abolished all of the usual festivities in her honour and devoted the forenoon to superintending the making of garments for the Messina orphans in one of the Quirinal Palace rooms which she had made into a temporary workroom. In the afternoon she made a round of the Rome hospitals, visiting all of the “earthquake children,” and with her own hands distributing sweets and little gifts, thus endeavouring to bring a gleam of sunshine into their darkened lives, and helping them for the moment to forget their sufferings. When someone spoke to her afterwards of this beautiful way of celebrating her birthday, she replied: “When these children grow up they may remember my birthday.” Her own children, too, were encouraged on this occasion to remember the wounded and orphaned victims. Instead of purchasing presents for their mother, according to their usual custom, they put the money into the Relief Fund, to which all the world was contributing. Little Prince Humbert brought his favourite plaything, a set of toy soldiers, to his mother and said: “Take this for the poor children.”
CHAPTER VI
SIMPLICITY OF THE ITALIAN COURT
The Italian Prince and Princesses, though they live in very beautiful Palaces, are simply brought up, and are not encouraged to have extravagant toys. Formerly, and even now sometimes, it has been the custom of foreign Ambassadors to the Italian Court, and even other sovereigns, to send gorgeous toys, and magnificent great dolls as big as the Princesses themselves, to these children. Queen Elena, fearing to have them grow accustomed to toys so much richer and better than other children, had taught them to surrender these things to poor children by sending them to hospital wards. Now the playthings of the Royal children are just ordinary toys like those that most children have and enjoy.
The Queen endeavours to make her children forget that they are of Royal blood, or in any way different from other children. In this particular she is very different from the Tsaritsa, who never allows her children or her court to forget that her son will one day be an Autocrat and Tsar of all the Russias, that her daughters are Grand Duchesses, and must, therefore, be kowtowed to by every Prince and granddame of the court.
While I was in Rome, Queen Elena related the following anecdote of her own children, which illustrates her simplicity of attitude toward the Italian Prince and Princesses.
The young Prince Humbert was recently put through an examination by his two older sisters, who wished to have an experience of their brother’s knowledge about colours.
Yolanda, pointing with her hand to the cloth of a piece of the furniture, asked: “What colour is this?”
“It is red,” Humbert readily answered, without mistake.