Evening star., 1923-03-06
British and American Capital Aids
Austrian Industrial Recuperation

that Queen Victoria was born and
spent her girlhood until she received
at dayhreak one morning when she
was just eighteen. the formal an
nouncement that through the death
Of her uncle. King William w, she
had succeeded to the throne.
Among the other royal occupants at
this very large and roomy old palace.
are Princess beatrice the mother or
the queen of Spain and of Lord Car
risbrook. and the princess elder sis
ter. Princess Louise. widow of the
ninth duke of Argyll. and who spent
some years in Canada when her nus
band. while still the marquis of
Lorne, was governor general of the
dominion 1t IS difficult to realize
that this gifted and most artistic
princess-once the beauty or the
reigning house of England, is today
approa ching eighty and by several
years the senior of her brother. Field
Marshal, the duke of Connaught.
X X X y
Princess Santa Borghese, daughter
of the ducal and princely Roman
house of Borghese, and who has
come to America at the instance OF
Premier Mussolini to deliver series
of lectures and addresses under the
auspices of the Italian American So
ciety, has a strain of English blood In
her veins which may perhaps nave
something to do with her mastery or
the English language. For her
great-grandmother was Lady Gwen
dolyn, daughter of the sixteenth
Lord Shrewsbury, who was the pre-
mier earl of England.
1t was this English Donna Gwendolyn
Borghese who is the heroine of the
celebrated Gorghese ghost story. She
was a very lovely woman, adored IN
Rome on account of her charity. and
succumbed to fatigue and pneumonia
while engaged in nursing the cholera
patients during the great epidemic at
Rome in 1870. Her funeral was made
the occasion of an extraordinary
demon stration. The students of the
University of Rome insisted upon
dragging the hearse to the church
Santa Maria Maggiore, where the
body was entombed in the magnih-
cent family chapel. built there by the
Borghese Pope Paul V. Her hus-
who had himself placed sapphire
ring of immense value upon his wife's
finger on her " ea1ing day, insisted
that it should be buried with her.
and himself watched the soldering OF
the leaden coffin.
few days after the funeral a
poor woman was arrested charged
with the theft of a sapphire rinG,
which had evidently belonged to
Dona Gwendolyn Borghese, since 1t
bore on the: INSIDE, Hef Hdiile anu
the date of her marriage. The woman
asserted that while she was playing
in the Borghese chapel of the church
the sanity princess had appeared to
her and had given her the ring.
On recognizing the gem. Luke
Mark Anthony Eorghese ordered his
wife's coffin to be opened in his own
presence and in that of several other
well known persons who had watched
its sealing up. None of the seals
were broken, the solder was un-
melted and untouched. But the hand
was slightly moved and the ring was
gone. Much struck by this strange
coincidence. the prince not only
caused the charge of theft against
the woman to be withdrawn, but even
provided for her welfare for the re-
nlainder of her days and educated
at his own expense her children, one
of whom is still living and we'll
known in the Italian world OF letters.