Francis Joseph’s passion for field sports—Enthusiasm of a nation of
sportsmen for a sportsman Emperor—Anecdotes of sport—Estrangement of
the Emperor and the Empress—The Empress’s departure for Madeira—Her
_wanderjahre_—Her attitude towards life—The keeping up of
appearances.
It seemed better to defy chronology, and speak of Frau Schratt at
once. We do not want her continually flitting across the stage, to the
interruption of grave historical discourses; but we do want to realise
that she is there—a fixed domestic institution, bringing Francis
Joseph, in a sense, into line even with the Habsburgs whose vagaries
have caused him consternation. If she had predecessors, she has had
no rivals; and no story arises out of the invitations to the imperial
alcove of which certain other theatrical ladies used to boast in the
earlier years of the reign. We will leave those matters, therefore,
and next give the necessary passing glance at the Emperor’s notorious
passion for field sports—a passion which has contributed more than a
little towards his popularity.
It often is so; such tastes being held to contribute the touch of
nature which makes the whole world kin, and the belief that a good
shot is sure to be a good fellow being deeply rooted in the human
breast—especially if the sportsman respects the rights of property,
and compensates agriculturists for damage done in the pursuit of game.
To some extent, indeed, the mere fact that an Emperor does not go
shooting in his crown and royal robes, but in a costume similar to
that worn by the peasants themselves, conveys to the bucolic mind a
pleasant impression of condescending affability. Moreover, rustics like
to be employed as beaters, and enjoy hearing and handing on stories of
imperial sportsmen wandering, and losing themselves, and being mistaken
for other people, and keeping up the illusion, and laughing at the
mistake.
There has been a good deal of that sort of thing in Francis Joseph’s
reign; and his most popular portraits are those which exhibit him,
alike as a young man, an old man, and a man of middle age, attired
in knickerbockers, heavily nailed boots, and a picturesquely plumed
Tyrolese hat. A certain _rapport_ seems to be established by those
portraits between a sportsman Emperor and a nation of sportsmen.
Habited in the costume indicated, Francis Joseph has sometimes
in the mountains, and even in his own parks, played the part of
Haroun-al-Raschid; and many anecdotes are told about his adventures in
that character.
Not all of them, of course, are true; and we will hope that the more
malicious stories are false. The story, for instance, that Francis
Joseph, taking part in a _battue_ in the midst of the troubles of
1866, asked an aged peasant for a light for his pipe, and was told the
aged peasant’s candid opinion of Emperors who amused themselves by
pursuing game when their subjects were dying for them on the stricken
field, is probably the invention of a political malcontent. A more
agreeable story—and one at which the Emperor himself may chuckle—is
that of his encounter with the farmer who took him for an ordinary
trespasser and threatened that, if he did not clear off his land at
once, he would first shoot him in the posterior parts as a mark of
identification and then inform the police; and he is, no doubt, as
pleased as his people are to remember how he once arrested poachers
with his own hand in one of his own parks, and having satisfied himself
of the truth of their representation that they were honest old soldiers
who had come to poverty through no fault of their own, gave orders
that they should be given appointments as gamekeepers. A ruler of whom
stories of that last kind are told never fails to be popular with
the sporting classes of the community; and the parade of gamekeepers
from all parts of the Empire, which was one of the most picturesque
features of Francis Joseph’s Jubilee celebrations, impresses one as a
most proper sequel thereto. These stories, however, though necessary to
atmosphere, are only incidental. It is enough to glance at them, just
as it is enough to glance at the story of those world-wide wanderings
of the Empress which began, long before she had provided Frau Schratt
to “entertain” the Emperor during her absence, with her sudden
departure for Madeira, in 1860.
Legend has crystallised round that departure: it has been called a
“flight,” and attributed to the cumulative effect of three distinct
domestic disturbances. First of all, we are told, there was a
disturbance caused by the terrible Archduchess Sophia, who would not
allow the Empress to bring up the infant Crown Prince in her own way:
a trouble which may have been bitter at the time, in spite of Countess
Marie Larisch’s assurance that the matter presently became one of
absolute indifference to her. In the second place, we are informed,
there was a disturbance because Francis Joseph made too public a
display of his affectionate regard for a certain Fräulein Roll, of one
of the Viennese theatres; and finally, if the reports may be trusted,
the quarrel reached its climax because Francis Joseph suffered himself
to be fascinated by a peasant girl whom he met when out shooting.
Francis Joseph, on that occasion, according to the story which was
current, stayed out all night after dismissing his retainers; and
one of the retainers told his wife what had happened; and the lady
repeated the story to other ladies of the Court at one of Elizabeth’s
receptions; and Elizabeth overheard, and acted on the impulse of the
moment. She dismissed her ladies, and called her maid, announcing
her intention of setting out at once, secretly, for a long journey.
The maid did her bidding; and she got as far as Trieste, where a
functionary, sent in pursuit, overtook her and induced her to
return—a course to which she consented only on the understanding that,
after appearances had been saved, she should be allowed to set out
again, with the Emperor’s express approval.
Whether things really happened just like that; whether it is true
that the flight was only hindered by the discretion of the captain
of the yacht, who opportunely discovered that his engines were out
of repair; whether it is also true that Francis Joseph threw himself
at Elizabeth’s feet, confessing his fault, imploring her pardon, and
ascribing the blame to his mother—all these are points on which a
conscientious investigator would hesitate to commit himself. The
story—given in M. Weindel’s _François-Joseph Intime_—is more than
fifty years old; and no authoritative correspondence or _procès verbal_
relating to it has been published. All that is positively established
is that the doctor was called in, and certified that Elizabeth was
suffering from a pulmonary weakness which necessitated her removal
to a warmer climate. So she set out for Madeira; and Francis Joseph
accompanied her a part of the way. How she left Madeira in a hurry, in
consequence of reports sent home concerning her manner of life there,
has already been set forth on the authority of Countess Marie Larisch.
That was the beginning of her _wanderjahre_; and there was to be no
end to them until her death. Elizabeth had learnt the importance of
keeping up appearances; and she did not forget it. Francis Joseph
did not need to learn it; for he has always stood out among the
backsliding Habsburgs as a great actor-manager, so to say, keeping
up the imperilled dignity of the House by playing a great part on a
great stage in a manner worthy of the great traditions to which so many
members of his family have proved unfaithful. _Noblesse oblige_ has
been his motto, though not theirs—though he may only have given it a
limited, spectacular application; and, if Elizabeth did not meet him
half way in the matter, at least she went a part of the way to meet him.
The result is known. On great ceremonial occasions Elizabeth consented
to appear, as she put it, “in harness,” and performed imperial
functions with splendid, though perhaps absent-minded, dignity. She
was as beautiful as the Empress Eugénie. She had a grander—a less
skittish—manner; and she quite understood that the frame in which
her beauty and grandeur were set at Schönbrunn and the Hofburg threw
a halo of glory about her head, quite different from that which
adorned the rival beauty who was Queen of the Revels at the Tuileries,
Fontainebleau, Saint-Cloud, and Compiègne. But she was, nevertheless,
always glad when the functions were over and the harness could be
taken off. She was like Little Nell’s grandfather, whose one desire
was to be “further away.” She never lost that impulse; and, if it ever
slackened, something was always sure to happen to renew it. It received
a great impetus from the Tragedy of Meyerling; perhaps—it is hardly
doubtful—an earlier impetus from the incident which drew from her the
bitter remark that “a baby is the end of many love affairs.”
So she wandered as much as she could—though she returned to Vienna
when she felt that she must—and a detailed relation of her wanderings
would almost read like a chapter from a road-book. She saw the Isles of
Greece and the Norwegian Fiords. She bathed on the coast of Norfolk,
and hunted in Ireland and in the Shires. She sojourned, for a season,
at Steephill Castle near Ventnor in the Isle of Wight—the present
dwelling of an American gentleman who sells medicines reputed to be
beneficial to the liver; and a red-brick house in which she passed
another season is pointed out at Cromer. She also went to Amsterdam
for massage, and to Cap Martin to sit in the sun; and she visited
her home in Bavaria, and her sisters’ homes in Paris, and stayed
at Claridge’s in London, and drank the waters at Kissingen. It was
sometimes thought that she deliberately courted death by her daring
feats of horsemanship. Her manner became that of a woman for whom life
had nothing left, except what converse with Nature could offer. She
even spoke of Nature as her “sole mediator with God”; and the scattered
fragments of her table talk which those who knew her have preserved,
are full of detached sentiments of a kind of poetic pessimism:
“We must try to make islands of ourselves.”
“When we cannot be happy in the way that we desire, there is nothing
for it but to fall in love with our sorrows.”
“In the life of every man there comes a time when his inner life
becomes extinct.”
“I know that he who revolts suffers a hundred times more than he who
is resigned; but resignation is a thing of which I am not capable.”
“I should like to be buried near the sea, so that the waves might beat
against my coffin. Then all the stars in Heaven would shine on me, and
the cypresses would lament for me far longer than either men or women.”
Such phrases sound, as it were, the _leit motif_ of the mystery of
Elizabeth’s life. She seems to have thrown them out, without telling
anyone what sorrow or disappointment had inspired them. Each reporter
who tries to guess at their meaning offers a different conjecture.
The unkindness of Francis Joseph, who was not unkind—the unkindness
of some lover, who was—the tragic deaths of her son, her cousin,
her brother-in-law, and her sister—all these things have been
cited, by one chronicler or another, as explanations of her funereal
gloom. But, as she confided in no one, no one need pretend to know,
or to do more than draw the picture of a woman as unhappy as she
was beautiful—clinging to her unhappiness as she clung to her
beauty—wandering restlessly through Europe like a shadow pursuing
shadows, but running home from time to time to keep up appearances.
And the picture, to be complete, should also show the figure of Francis
Joseph, doing his full share in the keeping up of those appearances,
and taking long journeys in order to pay periodical visits to the
Empress, who was making it so clear, to all who cared to look, that she
was happiest away from home, and always wearing on his countenance
that look of bland and imperturbable serenity with which his
innumerable portraits have made Europe familiar. It is a picture full
of lights and shadows and strange contrasts; but we must not dwell upon
it any more. Our attention is claimed by the supplementary spectacle
of the Emperor at odds with fate, confronting the difficulties which
threatened to tear his Empire to tatters, and gradually getting that
Empire into some sort of order.