“Austria’s idiot Archdukes”—A _catalogue raisonné_—The Emperor’s
brothers—The Archduke Rainer—The Archduke Henry and the actress—The
Archduke Louis Salvator, the Hermit of the Balearic Islands—The
Archduke Charles Salvator—The Archduke Joseph—The Archduke Eugéne
and his vow to be “as chaste as possible”—The Archduke William and
his courtship in the _café_—The Archduke Leopold—The awful Archduke
Otto and his manifold vagaries.
“Austria’s idiot Archdukes”—that is the scornful phrase in which
Bismarck summed up the pillars of the House of Habsburg; but we must
neither adopt it as a definition nor discard it as an insult.
Archdukes, it is true, have been bred to deviate from the normal human
type; but they have not all deviated from it in the same direction.
Brilliance, as well as beauty, may go with decadence. Genius and
madness are allied, and eccentricity is the cousin of both of them; the
diseased fruit of a diseased stock may sometimes seem to make up in
splendour for what it lacks in strength. We shall see how the various
cases of the Archdukes and Archduchesses confirm that truth—Francis
Joseph alone among them combining a fair endowment of ability with a
plausible resemblance to the average man.
Indeed, we have already seen him doing so. In his married life we have
seen him as the average man puzzled by the exceptional woman—puzzled
but pursuing to the last. In his political life we have seen him
flexible rather than strong, wise in his selection of counsellors, but
sometimes knowing better than they did, and always, in later years at
least, cutting the right figure in the eyes of the world: an Emperor,
indeed—“something like an Emperor,” as people say—magnificent,
authoritative, genial, and affable, though of an affability on which
none must venture to presume. It may be, of course, that there is
more here of appearance, carefully kept up, than of the reality which
compels appearance to conform to it; but one’s impression, in any case,
is of an Emperor whom the discipline of a strict education and early
responsibilities has, as it were, standardised.
But, if the Emperor has been standardised, the Archdukes have not.
They have gone as they have pleased, differing from other people as
Habsburgs must, but not differing from them in the pursuit of any
uniform ideal—often, indeed, striking extraordinary attitudes in their
strenuous endeavours to get back to the manners and methods of ordinary
mankind. Already we have met a few of them: the Crown Prince Rudolph,
a man of letters, a rake, and perhaps a potential rebel; “John Orth,”
a musician, a pamphleteer, and a hot-tempered visionary pelting the
Emperor with the insignia of the Golden Fleece. It remains, leaving
those stories behind us, to complete our picture of the Habsburg Court
with a review of the proceedings of some of the others.
We may even go back a little way for the purpose; for, though
the memory of the more distant events has been effaced by recent
excitements, Francis Joseph has had trouble with his brothers as
well as his son, his grandchildren, his nephews and nieces, and his
cousins. Maximilian, as we have seen, wounded his feelings by more than
one offensively pointed bid for popularity at his expense. Charles
Louis is described by Countess Marie Larisch as “a fat old man with
brutish instincts,” and accused by her of ill-treating his wife, who,
on her part, was understood to be in love with her Chamberlain. The
proceedings of the third brother, Louis Victor, are still wrapped in
a shroud of mystery which it might be indiscreet to try to tear; but
his career as a butterfly of fashion was cut suddenly short by Francis
Joseph’s peremptory command to him to leave Vienna for Salzburg and
stay there.
That is the end of the list of brothers, but only the beginning of
the list of eccentric or otherwise unsatisfactory Archdukes. Whether
any general impression of an abstract Archduke will result from an
enumeration of the performances of several concrete Archdukes is
dubious; but it will nevertheless be worth while to make out a list in
the hope that the figures will somehow group themselves into a subject
picture.
1. The Archduke Rainer, a second cousin, was long the most brilliant
representative of Habsburg culture: a Doctor of Philosophy of the
University of Vienna, the Head, for fifty years, of the Imperial
Academy of Sciences, the organiser of more than one International
Exhibition, and a collector who ransacked the Coptic monasteries of
the Lybian Desert for papyri, and brought two entire ship-loads of
them home with him to Trieste—a collection which Orientalists have
not yet finished sorting, though they have been at the task for half
a century. His marriage caused no trouble, for he was united in time
to an Archduchess who shared his simple tastes. He always, indeed,
had his aspirations after the simple life and the common lot; but his
manifestations of those longings did not cause much inconvenience.
Just as the Empress Elizabeth once startled the company at a Court
banquet by calling for a slice of sausage and a glass of beer, so
the Archduke Rainer is said to have expressed a desire, on a similar
occasion, for boiled mutton and caper sauce—a dish first served to
him by the landlady of a Brighton lodging-house. But there certainly
was no harm in that; nor was there any harm in the Archduke’s passion
for travelling in Switzerland under an assumed name, dining at _table
d’hôte_, and so hearing at first hand the gossip current about his
more lively relatives. The Archduke Rainer was an Archduke for whom
his collection of papyri was Archdukedom large enough; and he was an
ornament to the House of Habsburg, as he would have been an ornament of
any house of which he was a member.
2. The Archduke Henry—Archduke Rainer’s brother—was chiefly
distinguished for his morganatic marriage with the actress, Leopoldine
Hoffmann; and that story is chiefly interesting for the light which it
throws upon the gradual evolution of Francis Joseph’s attitude towards
such marriages. He accepted such a union in the case of the brother
of the Empress who married the actress Henrietta Mendel; but Bavarian
_mésalliances_ were, of course, outside his purview. Habsburgs,
he considered, should maintain a higher standard of matrimonial
exclusiveness than Wittelsbachs. He expressly forbade the Archduke
Henry’s marriage; and the priest who performed it is said only to have
been entrapped into doing so by a trick played on him at a luncheon
party. However that may have been, the Archduke fell into disgrace, and
was absent from Vienna for fifteen years, spending most of the time in
Switzerland. Then he was recalled, and pardoned, and restored to the
dignities of which he had been deprived. A title of nobility was, at
the same time, bestowed upon his wife; and when both he and she died,
as they did almost immediately afterwards, the Archduke Rainer, who had
no children of his own, adopted their orphaned daughter. The promotion
of the “unclassed” bride and her child—unclassed, of course, only from
the haughty Habsburg viewpoint—may be said in some measure to have
foreshadowed events which were to befall thereafter.
3. The Archduke Louis Salvator—John Orth’s elder brother—has
acquired for himself a kind of renown as the student hermit of the
Balearic Islands. He lives the simple life there, attired, according
to his niece, Princess Louisa, in “sandals and loose linen trousers,”
toiling like a labourer, with a sunburnt visage, in a vineyard of
his own, with a yacht always at hand, ready to take him to sea
whenever a fit of restlessness comes upon him. They speak of him as
a pagan in his tastes, a worshipper of the sun, and of what else
one knows not—perhaps of houris, for he is a bachelor, and perhaps
not. He has erected statues in his mysterious grounds to a private
secretary, to whom he was attached; he has been shipwrecked, and he
has written books. The Empress Elizabeth was the only member of the
House who showed much sympathy with him, sharing, as she did, his
love of solitude, his aversion from splendour, and his detestation
of the well-dressed crowd which has so little to do, except to be
well-dressed. What the Russian novelists—or their French critics—call
_impuissance de vivre_ would seem to be the note of his passion for
undisturbed seclusion; and he has written of his yacht as his sole
place of refuge:
“It was the only place which I could call my home—the only place in
which I really felt at home. In all my palaces and places of residence
in Austria and Hungary, and even on my beloved Island of Majorca,
I feel just as if I were in a hotel, and almost as if I were in a
prison. There is no sense of home in such places—no sense of home
whatsoever.”
4. The Archduke Charles Salvator—another of John Orth’s brothers—also
fled from splendour, but fled in another direction. His manner of
seeking the common lot was to mingle with the common people; and he
mingled with them in third-class railway carriages, and on the tops of
omnibuses and tram-cars. He also taught himself a trade—Louis XVI.’s
favourite trade of locksmith—and is said to have excelled at it. The
police did not like him, for his habits gave them trouble; but the
accidents which they feared never happened. A traitor to the Archducal
ideal, perhaps, he was a traitor to nothing else; and he lived and died
harmlessly.
5. The Archduke Joseph—one of the Emperor’s cousins—was clever
in more ways than one, being a man of learning and also a man of
business. He counted among the authorities on the folk-lore of the
Hungarian gypsies; and he was a valuable administrator of commercial
and industrial concerns. His name figured on the official list of
registered licensed victuallers; and he distilled an admirable brandy.
Moreover, he was the titular head of a Casino on the Danube near
Buda-Pesth: a versatile Archduke, in short, who made himself generally
useful, and was appreciated.
6. The Archduke Eugène—the Archduke Joseph’s brother—has specialised
in religion, though he was educated as a soldier, and was, at one and
the same time, a colonel of cavalry and a doctor of divinity. At
one time he was anxious to resign his commission in the hussars in
order to become an Archbishop, like Beethoven’s patron, the Archduke
Rudolph; but Francis Joseph would not permit the transformation. As
a compromise, he undertook to make him Grand Master of the Teutonic
Order, as soon as that office fell vacant: an office the taking up of
which is preluded by the singular vow to be “as chaste as possible.” It
is said that the Archduke Eugène, who looks his part to the life, has
taken the vow as well as the office seriously.
7. The Archduke William—the uncle of the Archduke Eugène—preceded him
in the Grandmastership; but, in his case, the possibilities of chastity
appear to have been limited. The stories of his assignations with
ladies in the _cabinets particuliers_ of restaurants are numerous, and
some of them are diverting. The landlord, on one occasion, was so proud
of his patronage that he could not keep the secret of it. Not realising
what the consequences might be, he whispered to a friend that the
Archduke William was, at that moment, doing him the honour of pursuing
a courtship in an upper chamber. The consequence was that, when the
Archduke descended with the lady from the upper chamber, to take his
carriage, he found a vast crowd of loyal supporters assembled on the
pavement, to receive him with musical honours. His case must have been
even more embarrassing than that of Francis Joseph, when the cook knelt
at his feet and sang the national anthem, in the small hours of the
morning, in Frau Schratt’s villa.
8. The Archduke Leopold—brother of the Archduke Rainer—was, at one
time, commander-in-chief of the corps of engineers; but he suddenly
disappeared, and people wondered what had become of him. Epilepsy—that
curse of the House of Habsburg—had struck him down. He was removed
to the remote castle of Hornstein, where he had to be kept in the
seclusion of a mental invalid until he died.
9. The Archduke Otto—brother of the present heir-apparent, and
consequently Francis Joseph’s nephew—was the most amazing of all the
Archdukes, and the one whose case most fittingly illustrates the usual
generalisations about Habsburg degeneracy. The common people rather
liked him; for he had the negative merit of not being proud, and was,
in the main, the sort of gay and festive buffoon to whom the hearts of
the common people, when untrammelled by considerations of morality,
go out. But people who were not so common took a different view of
him; and Austria was filled with stories of his misdeeds and the
discomfiture which they brought him.
Meeting a funeral procession, when he was out riding, he insisted that
the coffin should be laid upon the ground in order that he might leap
his horse over it. Getting drunk in a fashionable _café_, he more
than once executed a dance, apparelled in nothing except a képi, a
sword-belt, and a pair of gloves; and once, in order to express his
contempt for things in general and Habsburgs in particular, he poured
the contents of a dish of spinach over the Emperor’s bust. A furious
lady cyclist once assailed him with a whip for breaking up a cycle race
on the high road on which he was driving; and the Austrian journalists
who aspersed his private character were acquitted by the juries when he
ventured to take proceedings against them.
The worst thing that he ever did was to invite his boon companions
to pay a surprise visit to his wife’s bedchamber, at two o’clock in
the morning, at a time when she was just about to become a mother,
and to strike the one boon companion who was sober enough to draw his
sword and protect the Archduchess from the indignity. The matter was
reported; and, as it was impossible for the offended officer to avenge
his honour by challenging a member of the Imperial house, the Emperor
took the matter under his own hands. He thanked the officer, it is
said, in Otto’s presence for the service which he had rendered; he
smacked Otto’s face in the officer’s presence; and he put Otto under
arrest.
And so on, and so forth; for the scandalous stories about Otto are
endless. It need only be added that he died young, as the result of
his dissipations—the structure of his once handsome nose having first
collapsed.
There we may end our _catalogue raisonné_ of those Archdukes whose
connection with this biography is only incidental. Decidedly it is
difficult to generalise about them, for they are, and have been, no
more like each other than like other people. There have been good
Archdukes as well as bad; clever Archdukes as well as stupid ones; and,
at the end of the list, one finds oneself asking: Is there any single
trait on which we can lay our fingers, declaring that it is common to
them all?
At the first blush one would be disposed to say that there is none;
that the recluses, and the rowdies, and the students, and the men of
business of the House of Habsburg are like a fortuitous collection of
incongruous atoms. But when one looks again, and looks more carefully,
one becomes conscious of a common force which is at work among them
all. One may describe it, in the language of the physicists, as a
_centrifugal_ force: Nature’s reply, as it were, to that centripetal
force which has been at work from a distant past through the media of
the doctrine of divine right, and the systems of specialised princely
education, and consanguineous marriages. There is, to sum the matter
up, a Habsburg ideal, forming the centre of the circle—an ideal to
which Francis Joseph himself has remained as faithful as possible for
as long a time as possible; but there is also that centrifugal force
whirling all the individual Habsburgs away from that centre in all
imaginable directions.
Most of them, as we know, have been whirled into marriages incompatible
with the ideal; but there have been exceptions to that rule, as to any
rule which one might endeavour to lay down. The only feature really
common to their very various adventures and ways of life is that the
force has affected, and the whirl has caught, each one of them. Otto
stripping himself in public; Charles Salvator boarding the tram; Louis
Salvator hiding his face in the Balearic Islands; Eugène clamouring
for an archbishopric; and Rainer sighing for boiled mutton and caper
sauce—all these are multifarious manifestations of an identical
phenomenon; that phenomenon being Nature’s centrifugal force which
is making, and will continue to make, havoc of the imposing Habsburg
system.
It is in the matter of matrimony, however, that the manifestations of
that force have excited most attention, and promise to be most fruitful
of consequences; and it is of those matrimonial divagations from the
central ideal that we shall next have to speak in detail.