The prettiest sight I know in Rome is when the Royal Princesses and the little Crown Prince, Humbert, go driving. I lived for a winter in an apartment adjoining the Quirinal Palace, so that it frequently fell to me to catch glimpses of the Royal Family going or coming. Like the King and Queen, they drive out almost daily during the months the Royal Family spend in the capital, but it was the little ones who always caught my eye and made me turn to watch so long as they were in view. Usually there are the three girls, and a nursemaid holding the Prince on her knees. Their carriage is an ordinary two-horsed, double-seated coach. Immediately behind the carriage always ride two guards, on bicycles, men in plain, dark-blue clothes with knee breeches. A stranger in the city would not even notice them, although if one were observant he might observe many of the passers-by lifting their hats and turning to watch. Almost every pleasant afternoon, when the King is in residence in Rome, immediately after lunch, or on a Saturday forenoon, the children are driven just outside the walls of Rome to Villa Savoy, a playhouse which is all their own. During that portion of{250} the year spent in Rome this is practically the only change they have from the Palace nursery and the Quirinal gardens—the latter by no means a cramped play-ground. When the Duke of Ascoli, Gentleman-in-Waiting to Queen Elena, first showed me these grounds I was quite astounded by their extent and their unique beauty. There are long avenues of boxwood hedges, groves of dark firs and picturesque parasol pines, fields of untended grass and acres of carefully nurtured flowers. And all this behind the dull yellow Quirinal walls, fairly in the centre of the city. But any growing kiddies long for more than the yard of a city home, though that yard attain the proportions of a park, and the home be a Palace. Villa Savoy supplies the want, and here the children have their ponies and their pet donkey. Here Queen Elena, too, finds relief and refreshment, for the quiet of the children’s playhouse is never intruded upon by the court or visitors who are not intimates of the Royal Family. The Italian sovereigns are striving to purify and elevate the atmosphere and tone of their court so that their children may grow up in sweet home surroundings, protected from the careless waywardness of the aristocratic world of Europe. Some call it a “straight-laced” court. One influence which may be responsible for this may be traced to an incident in the schoolboy days of the King.
When the King was a youth of sixteen he deter{251}mined to change his handwriting from the ordinary sloping hand in universal vogue to the so-called vertical. The formula which he took for his motto was, “Writing straight, paper straight, body straight.” This boyhood motto has been before him ever since. One of the first things the present King and Queen Elena did, upon their accession to the Throne, was to attach to their persons only married couples. Ladies-in-Waiting to the Queen could only be married ladies whose husbands were during the same period Gentlemen-in-Waiting to the King. This was an early step toward elevating the moral standards of the Italian Court. Italian aristocracy had not been renowned for virtuous living, but the present sovereigns holding to a high standard of morality determined to purify the court in so far as in them lay by banishing from active service all ladies and gentlemen whose names had ever been bandied by current gossip. This crusade, if it may be so called, was aided by the existing laws of the country which are still sufficiently under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church to prohibit divorce. No divorced man or woman has standing in Queen Elena’s court. King Victor Emmanuel is himself extremely devoted to his Queen and this devotion has often led to his being charged with intense jealousy. Whether or not this is true, his attitude toward Elena has resulted in her more and more withdrawing from the companionship of people of the court and devoting herself to her children. It is{252} a pretty picture, that of the home life of this Queen. Six months of the year the Royal Family live at the Quirinal Palace in Rome. The remainder of the year is spent at various palaces and castles in different parts of the Kingdom, but chiefly at Monza in the North, where the summers are delig............