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{230} 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{231} 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.
In the spring of the year 1895, when Elena was twenty-two years old, she and her sister Anna came with their mother, Princess Melena, to the opening of th............