The Archduke Francis Ferdinand—An invalid who delayed
to marry—Report of his betrothal to the Archduchess
Gabrielle—Announcement of his betrothal to Countess Sophie
Chotek—Anecdotes of the courtship—Indignation of the Archduchess
Gabrielle’s mother—Attitude of Francis Joseph—-He permits the
marriage on condition that it shall be morganatic—Francis Ferdinand
compelled to swear a solemn oath that he is marrying beneath him,
and that his children will be unworthy to succeed him—Reasons for
doubting whether he will eventually be bound by his oath.
Francis Ferdinand is the son of Francis Joseph’s brother, Charles
Louis, and himself the brother of the Archduke Otto whose outrageous
eccentricities we have reviewed, and of the Archduke Frederick Charles
who wooed and won the homely daughter of the mathematical master, after
helping her to shell the peas. He was not classed in his youth with the
Archdukes who matter, for he was a delicate boy, and it seemed unlikely
that he would live to grow up. Though he grew up, he remained delicate,
and it was still assumed that he would die young. Hence the talk, which
came to nothing, of marrying the Archduchess Elizabeth to Prince Eitel
Fritz, and securing the succession to the throne to her by a fresh
Pragmatic Sanction.
Whether we regard him as having been well or badly brought up depends
upon our educational ideals. If it be good to be a Catholic, and better
still to be a bigoted Catholic, then his upbringing was admirable. From
his earliest years he was taught to walk, if not with God, at least
with the Jesuits: the worthy son of a father of limited intelligence,
who combined (if his portraits are to be trusted) the smug appearance
of a sinister family solicitor with the fanaticism of an Ultramontane
reactionary. There are those, to this day, who sum him up with the
statement that he is “in the hands of the Jesuits”; but that is a
phrase which may, in practice, mean anything or nothing. When princes
and priests form a Holy Alliance, the wisdom of the serpent is quite as
likely to be found in one partner of the combination as in the other.
Their interests are seldom identical, and exploitation is a game at
which two can play.
[Illustration:
_Photo_ _Adèle_
THE ARCHDUKE FRANCIS FERDINAND.]
It mattered little as long as Francis Ferdinand was expected to die,
at any instant, of consumption; but he did not die of that disease,
and perhaps he never really had it. He wintered in warm climates; he
took cod liver oil; he travelled. Treatment and medicine produced the
desired effect. Francis Ferdinand became as well able as any of his
relatives to take his place in public life, and had to be reckoned
with. The question of finding a wife for him became urgent. There were
plenty of Archduchesses available; why did he not choose one of them
and beget an heir? That was what Francis Joseph wanted to know when he
saw his nephew thirty-five or more, and still a bachelor. The resulting
dialogues are said to have been rather heated.
Presently rumour began to whisper that Francis Joseph had got his
way. It was observed that Francis Ferdinand paid frequent visits to
the house of the Archduke Frederick and the Archduchess Isabella at
Presburg. They had charming daughters—the Archduchess Gabrielle was
particularly charming. Here, it was felt, well within the Habsburg
ring-fence, was the opportunity of an ideal betrothal; and here, at any
rate, was the journalist’s opportunity for the intelligent anticipation
of events before they occurred. Various newspapers, though not the
official ones, grasped that opportunity and announced the betrothal.
Official confirmation, they did not doubt, would come later, enabling
them to boast: “I told you so.” But those readers of the newspapers who
had been admitted to the Archduchess Isabella’s family circle shook
their heads. They had seen what they had seen, and they anticipated
quite other eventualities.
The Archduchess Isabella had a lady-in-waiting—Countess Sophie Chotek:
a member of a Bohemian family, which, though old, was poor, and not of
the highest order of nobility. Her father had held a governorship in
Bohemia; her brother was a provincial official of moderate, but not
excessive, dignity. But Francis Ferdinand, while charmingly polite to
the Archduchess Gabrielle, was more often to be seen sitting in cosy
corners with Countess Sophie Chotek. Often and often he sat a whole
evening with her in a cosy corner, talking gloomily about his health,
and complaining of the rigorous prescriptions of the doctors. Cod-liver
oil, he said, was horrid stuff. It did him no good; he should stop
taking it.
And Countess Sophie Chotek reasoned and pleaded with him, as womanly
women do. Of course, cod-liver oil was good for him—he mustn’t be
silly, and pretend that he knew better than the doctors; a peppermint
lozenge would take away the taste. Anyhow, take it he really must, not
only for his own sake, but for the sake of those to whom his life was
precious.
“For my sake—to please me,” she concluded coaxingly; and Francis
Ferdinand promised, and found that the medicine did work the promised
miracle. He got better and better, until he was quite well; and
there was joy in the House of Habsburg, and all the Archdukes and
Archduchesses were grateful to Countess Sophie Chotek. It delighted
the Archduchess Isabella in particular to see that her lady-in-waiting
had such a good influence over the heir-apparent, and had succeeded,
after everyone else had failed, in modifying his attitude towards his
medicine. It did not occur to her that cod-liver oil was a potion which
could operate as a love philtre, or that the conversations conducted in
the cosy corners might have run on from cod-liver oil to other and more
intimate themes.
But so it was; and while the Archduchess Isabella was giving Countess
Sophie Chotek great credit for her tact, Countess Sophie Chotek was,
in truth, displaying even more tact than the Archduchess was giving
her credit for. For it came to this: that while the Archduke Francis
Ferdinand was supposed to be nursing himself with a view to proposing
marriage to the Archduchess’s daughter, he was, in fact, offering the
devotion of a lifetime to the Archduchess’s lady-in-waiting. He was
not only taking his oil three times a day for her sake; he was also
declaring that, if it cured him, he should feel that he owed his life
to her, and should show his gratitude by begging her to unite her life
to his. It was understood between them that, when he did ask her to do
this, she would not refuse; but meanwhile they kept their counsel until
an accident disclosed their secret.
That secret came to light because Francis Ferdinand—or perhaps his
valet—was a careless packer. He had been at Halbthurn on a visit
to the Archduke Frederick; and when he had taken his departure, a
servant came to the Archduchess Isabella and told her that he had left
a quantity of jewellery behind him on the dressing-table. It had, of
course, to be sent after him; and the Archduchess thought it better
to see to the matter herself. She went to the bedroom, therefore, to
collect and review the jewellery, and the inspection gave her a shock.
She spoke to a servant:
“Tell Countess Chotek I desire to see her immediately.”
Countess Sophie Chotek obeyed her summons, and was greeted with:
“This calls for an explanation, miss. Pray, what have you to say for
yourself?”
“This” being a medallion portrait of the Countess discovered among
Francis Ferdinand’s personal effects.
One can imagine that the blow was a severe one to an Imperial mother
who had cherished the hope of marrying her Imperial daughter to the
heir-apparent. One can further easily believe that the explanation, if
any, which was offered was unacceptable. One can almost fancy that one
hears the climax of the dialogue:
“That will do. You need say nothing more; but you will leave my house
at once. I give you half an hour in which to pack.”
Of course, Countess Sophie could not pack in half an hour, but had to
go without her luggage; of course, too, the discovery of a portion
of her secret entailed the revelation of the whole of it, though so
far as the public were concerned it was only made known by degrees.
First came the report that Francis Joseph and Francis Ferdinand were,
for some unknown reason, not on speaking terms, and that the Court
officials were snubbing Francis Ferdinand with educated insolence.
Then came the rumour that Francis Ferdinand was going to renounce his
archducal rights, marry Countess Sophie Chotek, leave Austria, and take
up his residence with her at the Villa d’Este, at Rome. Finally came
the official notification that the marriage would take place—that the
Emperor had sanctioned it—but on terms.
And the nature of those terms?
This is not a Court history, and there is no need to gloss them
over,—they shall be described with absolute frankness, and in plain
language. The stipulation which the prestige of the House of Habsburg
was held to require was this: that affronts should be publicly put on
the bride before, during, and after the ceremony. The view officially
taken of her may be said to be summed up in the carefully worded speech
which the Emperor, gorgeously attired in his Field-Marshal’s uniform,
read at a special meeting of his Privy Council. Every phrase in it
should be noted with care:—
“I have invited the members of my House, my Privy Councillors, and my
Ministers to attend to-day’s ceremony because the declaration which
will be made is of the highest importance to the monarchy. Inspired
by the wish always to provide as best I can for the members of my
high House, and to give my nephew a new proof of special love, I have
consented to his marriage with Countess Sophie Chotek. The Countess
descends, it is true, from noble lineage; but her family is not one of
those which, according to the customs of our House, we regard as our
equals. Now, as only women from equal Houses can be regarded as equal
in birth, this marriage must be regarded in the light of a morganatic
marriage, and the children which, with God’s blessing, will spring
from it cannot be given the rights of members of the Imperial House.
The Archduke will, therefore, to make this certain for all time,
to-day take an oath to the effect that he recognises all this, that he
recognises his marriage with Countess Chotek to be a morganatic one,
that the consequences are that the marriage cannot be regarded as one
between equals, and that the children springing from it can never be
regarded as rightful children, entitled to the rights of members of
our House. I beg the Minister of my Imperial House to read the oath
which the Archduke will swear.”
The Emperor’s voice is said to have been “full of emotion” while he
recited this solemn manifesto. One would like to attribute at least a
little of the emotion to regret that his family pride required him to
insult a woman who, far from doing him any harm, had saved his nephew’s
life by coaxing him to obey his physicians; but it is difficult to
picture Francis Joseph as melted to tenderness by the idyll of the
cod-liver oil. In any case, his emotion, whatever it may have been, was
not allowed to interfere with the ceremony, which was continued with
an ecclesiastical pomp indicating that Francis Joseph does, indeed, at
times, mistake himself for God and the Archdukes for archangels, who
are failing to behave as such.
It was Francis Ferdinand’s turn. Bowing to the Emperor, he advanced to
the table, on which stood a crucifix, laid his first and middle fingers
on the Testament which was held up to him by the Archbishop of Vienna,
and read the oath from a paper which he held in his left hand. This is
the remarkable text of it:—
“I, Francis Ferdinand, by the grace of God, Archduke of Austria, swear
to God the Almighty that I recognise the House Laws always, and, in
the case of my marriage with Sophie, Countess Chotek, specially; that
I accept the oath read to me, with all its clauses, and therefore
recognise that my marriage with Sophie Chotek is a morganatic one;
that the children which, with God’s blessing, may spring from this
marriage, will not be equal in birth, and, according to the Pragmatic
sanction, will not be entitled to succeed to the throne, either in
Austria or in Hungary.”
The two speeches sound like the last lingering echoes of mediævalism;
and Francis Joseph, in spite of the successive shocks which experience
has given him, probably retains more mediæval ideas than any other
contemporary ruler. The superiority of the Habsburgs to the rest
of mankind—at all events, of Austrian mankind—is not, for him, a
proposition which needs to be demonstrated; it is a law of thought.
He does not argue about it, or expect others to argue about it, but
finds it in his consciousness together with his conceptions of space
and time. What others may do counts for nothing in comparison with what
the Habsburgs _are_; and that though a simple-minded seeker after truth
who should ask _what_ they are, could be told little in reply except
that they are the Habsburgs. Gold similarly is esteemed a nobler metal
than iron, though it cannot be fashioned into such effective swords or
ploughshares.
On that principle, therefore—the principle that to be is more than
to do, and that the function of those who can do is to serve those who
are—Francis Joseph took his stand: thoroughly believing in it—himself
at once the worshipper and the worshipped; no more regarding his
declaration of his own immeasurable superiority to other men as an
insult to those to whom he declared himself superior than the judge so
regards his admonition of the convicted prisoner in the dock. One can
only insult one’s equals. Any day on which the Head of the House of
Habsburg decides a point of precedence takes rank as a Judgment Day—a
day on which there can be only one answer to the question: Shall not
the Judge of All the Earth do right? It was a matter of course that the
prelates of the State Church lent themselves to the doctrine; for that
is what the prelates of a State Church are for.
So that it was a matter of course that Francis Ferdinand should be
required to proclaim _urbi et orbi_ that he was marrying beneath him;
that the marriage should be condemned to be a hole-and-corner affair
which even the bridegroom’s brothers did not attend; that the bride’s
status should be left so undignified that it was not permissible to her
to attend the opera with her husband, or to sit in the Imperial stand
with him at the races. But though that was Francis Joseph’s official
attitude as an Emperor and a Habsburg, he was also a man and a brother,
capable of tolerance and condescension—increasingly capable of it as
the years went by. Flexibility, good nature, weariness of the long
struggle with the Zeit Geist—one does not know to which of these
things to attribute the modification of his tone; but he has modified
it. Francis Ferdinand has been taken back into favour and allowed to
hold the highest offices suitable for him; and Countess Sophie Chotek
has been promoted to be Duchess of Hohenberg. She does not yet rank
with the Archduchesses, but she does take her place in the hierarchy
immediately after them.
How will she rank eventually, after the inevitable day on which Francis
Joseph is gathered to his fathers? That is a question which must soon,
in the course of nature, present itself; and it would be a great
mistake to suppose that it was settled, once and for all, when Francis
Ferdinand stood before the crucifix and swore that his wife was, and
that his children would be, inferior persons, unworthy to be related to
him. It is not merely that “Jove laughs at lovers’ perjuries,” or that
Francis Ferdinand’s heart rejects the Habsburg superstition to which we
have seen him rendering lip service. One must also remember that knots
of this kind can never be tied so tightly that no way of untying them
can be found by adroit and willing hands.
No doubt the Archduke is a religious man who understands the nature
of an oath; but he was “brought up by the Jesuits,” and one suspects
that he has not been brought up by them for nothing. All Catholics are
addicted to casuistry, and the Jesuits specialise in it; nor does one
need any extra-ordinary shrewdness to divine the insidious questions
which may be invoked as solvents of a situation which Francis Joseph
believed himself to have made hard and fast. Let us set them forth in
order:—
1. Granted that Francis Ferdinand had the right to swear away his own
rights, had he any right to swear away the potential rights of persons
still unborn?
2. Granted that Francis Ferdinand is personally bound by his oath,
on what grounds can that oath fetter the freedom of action of the
Hungarian and Austrian Parliaments?
3. Cannot the Pope, to whom God has given the power to loose and bind,
free any man from any obligation, even though he has sworn by bell,
book, and candle to bow to it?
4. Would it not be right and reasonable for the Pope to accord that
dispensation to such a religious man as Francis Ferdinand? Would it not
be to the interest of the Church that he should do so?
5. Is there any particular reason why the Austrian and Hungarian
Parliaments should not petition him to take that course?
[Illustration:
_Photo_ _Adèle_
THE DUCHESS OF HOHENBERG
(Wife of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand).]
Upon the answers given to those questions, and not upon the text of the
oath which Francis Ferdinand swore, the ultimate inheritance of the
Empire will depend. They are questions to which, so far as logic goes,
one answer is as good as another; which means that the answer actually
given to them will be dictated by expediency and the wishes of the
influential. Those who picture Francis Ferdinand dutifully abiding by
his pledges because he is a religious man not only misjudge him, but
misjudge religious people generally. There is always a Higher Law—the
universe is full of Higher Laws. One can always appeal to them; and, if
one is an Emperor, one may have the advantage of being judge in one’s
own case. Francis Ferdinand will enjoy that advantage presently; and it
remains to be seen what use he will make of it. The issue is not yet,
though it cannot be long delayed.
Meanwhile, one may salute Francis Ferdinand respectfully as one who
has fought a good fight, and has not been content with half successes.
His wife is a clever woman who knows how to bide her time, and does
not go out of her way to make unnecessary enemies. He himself has his
party, which looks likely to be the party of the future. The blow which
he has struck at the Habsburg system is the hardest blow which that
system has yet sustained, because he has struck it with dignity and
self-restraint, gratifying the instinctive Habsburg craving for the
infusion of fresh blood without provoking any of those scandals which
give the enemy occasion to blaspheme. If the Papacy was in earnest when
it admonished the Habsburgs for their consanguineous unions, then he
may fairly claim that the Pope is his ally in the battle.
One cannot say the same of the acts of rebellion which have to
be reviewed next, though they too have served their purpose as
object-lessons: crowning proofs to be cited in support of the thesis
that the Habsburg system of in-breeding in order to develop an
unique type of man and woman is a failure, and that nature, expelled
with a pitchfork, is apt to return—an old friend with a new face,
exaggerating even to the point of grotesqueness the normal man and
woman’s passion for romance.