Princess Victoria Eugenie Julia Ena was born October 24, 1887. She enjoyed the distinction of being the first royal baby born in Scotland for precisely two hundred and eighty-seven years. Through her girlhood she was much with her grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, and she also enjoyed the particular interest of her godmother, the Empress Eugenie of France, who later on was largely instrumental in bringing about the meeting between the young King of Spain and her godchild which resulted in her elevation to a throne.
Princess Ena was the only daughter in a family of four children, and her childhood was spent much in the company of her brothers, whose studies and play she shared. Before she was twelve years old she had learned to ride like a boy, to manage a boat and had acquired considerable skill with the fishing rod. After the death of her father, Prince Henry of Battenberg, Princess Ena assisted her mother in the administration of the Isle of Wight, which was the particular bailiwick of her family. Doubtless the early lessons of administration which she learned at this time was the kind of preparation for the administrative duties of Queen, which, after her marriage, were to devolve upon her.
She received an education befitting a Princess of Great Britain. When still very young she had acquired a knowledge of French and German, and this practice in mastering new languages proved of great value later when she came to take up Spanish--a rich and full-throated tongue in which she became fluent within a few months.
Princess Ena also showed a decided talent for music and she is not only a ready, skilful pianist, but she also composes music.
Her young life was happy. She was the favourite, not only of Queen Victoria and Empress Eugenie, but of all the Royal family in England. There was no touch of the hard and sordid in those years. She dwelt in the midst of wholesome, happy people and always in beautiful places. The Isle of Wight, her home, is a sweet, tranquil haven, remote from the frequented paths of the world, far from the hurry and noise and dirt of modern England. In Spring and Summer it is like a great garden with abiding places set therein.
Balmoral in Scotland, where she was born and where she frequently lived, especially when her grandmother, Queen Victoria, was in residence in Scotland, is one of the most glorious spots in Britain. The magnificent Royal Park is widely encircled by the rugged mountains of that Northland. The river Dee, famed in song and story, runs close to hand. This Northland is more mountainous and stern than Ayr or Dumfries, the land of Bobbie Burns, and as instinct with tradition of the fighting Jacobite times as the Border country--the land of Scott--or Loch Leven with its memories of Queen Mary. Princess Ena revelled in the stirring past as she breathed the strong air of the Cairngorms, growing physically strong and sturdy, innocent of the Destiny which was to shape her life and make her a Mother of Kings.