The romantic Quadruple Alliance—The jarring notes—Princess Louisa’s
objections to her brother’s companion Fräulein Adamovics—The
sentimental life of the Archduke Leopold—He becomes “Herr Wulfling,”
and marries Fräulein Adamovics—Herr and Frau Wulfling run wild
in woods—Herr Wulfling divorces his wife and marries again—His
confidences to Signor Toselli—Princess Louisa’s conception of the
Simple Life—Her manners shock the Swiss—She dismisses M. Giron—Her
marriage to Signor Toselli.
There were wheels within wheels; and the members of the Romantic
Quadruple Alliance were not absolutely united. They could hold together
in the presence of alarums and excursions; but intimacy and reflection
discovered weak points in the combination. The dissidence was not
quite so sudden or pronounced as in the case of those Balkan States
which temporarily made common cause against Turkey; but lines of
cleavage were nevertheless soon revealed, impairing the solidity of the
_entente_, and introducing an appearance of comedy, not to say farce,
into what should have been a drama of sustained and purely serious
interest.
The first jarring note was struck when Princess Louisa made the
acquaintance of Wilhelmina Adamovics. The ex-actress ran into the
bedroom of the ex-Archduchess at Zurich, bursting with affection, and
eager to take a new sister to her arms; but the ex-Archduchess was not
so democratic as all that. Though she had bicycled with the dentist and
made assignations with the tutor, she could not forget that she was a
Habsburg, but retained enough family pride to feel that it should have
been left to her to take the initiative in emotional demonstration.
“The newcomer,” she tells us, “was obviously not of my world”; and she
continues:—
“I was taken aback. I had not expected this, and I did not want it. I
knew, indeed, that Leopold had fallen in love with a beautiful girl
of the people, but it never crossed my mind that he intended to marry
her, and I felt instinctively that her arrival in our midst would
upset all our plans.
“I tried, however, to disguise my annoyance, and to put some warmth
into my greeting, but she was quite impossible, and I subsequently
discovered that she had not even been trained in the rudiments of the
art of behaving at table.”
It was a bad beginning; and it was not made any better by the
representations of the Vienna newspapers that “the flight of the Crown
Princess was exclusively due to her brother Leopold’s influence.” Their
cue seems to have been to depreciate Leopold; and this is the place in
which to reproduce the character sketch of him printed in the _Neue
Freie Presse_:—
“Archduke Leopold Ferdinand” (we there read) “is a very intelligent
man, but somewhat eccentric, whimsical in a high degree, and difficult
to manage. A prominent feature of his character is irony and sarcasm.
He has in this way given much displeasure to officers of high rank,
and this is the only reason why, in spite of his jovial and agreeable
manner, he has made no friends in the army. While at Iglau he was
constantly in conflict with the commander of the regiment. Thus, one
day he went out riding disguised as a lady, in company with another
officer, and was seen and recognised by his commanding officer, who,
of course, took him to task. He hates etiquette, loves free and easy
manners, and has always had little intercourse with the aristocracy,
preferring lively young people of the middle class.”
The free-and-easiness of the Archduke’s manners had, indeed, manifested
itself in the presence of Francis Joseph himself, on the day on which
he was summoned to the Emperor’s presence to be told that his way of
life was dissolute and indecorous. He did not, like John Orth, pelt the
Emperor with the insignia of his Orders; but he found another means,
not less effective, of carrying the war into the enemy’s camp, bowing
politely and responding:
“I hear what you say, sir, but I fail to see why I should pay any
attention to it. If there is a mote in my eye, there is a beam in
yours. When you speak of such matters as these, I do not regard you as
the Emperor of Austria—I merely regard you as Herr Schratt.”
And so saying, he ceremoniously bowed himself out before Francis
Joseph could lay his finger on the electric button which would have
summoned the secret police.
Thus, by that _tu quoque_, he justified his own preference for “lively
young people of the middle-class”; but it nevertheless seems that, in
Switzerland, the particular liveliness of Fräulein Adamovics, after
jarring from the first upon his sister’s taste, came eventually to
jar upon his own. It transpired in the course of time—in the course
of a very short time, in fact—that the tastes, manners, and customs
of Fräulein Adamovics deviated from the healthy norm no less than
those of the more eccentric of the Habsburgs, albeit in a different
direction. Her passion for the simple life and the return to nature
lured her on to proceedings hardly compatible with sanity. The goal of
self-realisation, it seemed to her, could only be attained if men and
women divested themselves of their clothing, and climbed trees in order
to crack nuts.
A strange doctrine truly, and one to be condemned by those pragmatists
who bid us test every doctrine by the touchstone question: “Will it
work?” It found its condemnation in this case, when “Herr Wulfling”
began to translate theory into practice. After running wild in woods
for a season, he was persuaded by the jeers of a passer-by to visit
a barber’s shop; and the sudden sight which he got of himself in the
barber’s mirror—the spectacle of a hirsute savage suggesting a Wild
Man from Borneo—decided him to return to civilisation by the shortest
cut available. He ran to the nearest slop-shop, put himself into a
reach-me-down check-suit, engaged rooms in a _pension_, and shortly
afterwards divorced the wife who had lured him into his amazing
courses, and sought another wife of a more commonplace kind.
His second wife was a Swiss lady—Fräulein Ritter—and his union to
her appears to have been more fortunate. He acquired the rights of
citizenship in the Canton of Zug; and he presently obtained damages
in a Swiss Court of Law against a journalist, who circulated the
report that he had always lived, and was still living, a disorderly
life, and had refused to pay his rates. The dispute about the rates
was only a dispute about an assessment; and the tribunal endorsed
counsel’s favourable estimate of Herr Wulfling’s personal worth. It is
interesting to compare that estimate with the depreciatory paragraph
quoted from the _Neue Freie Presse_; and we may borrow the report of
the _Indépendance Belge_:—
“In Austria” (we there read) “M. Leopold Wulfling was indifferent
to the attractions of fashionable life, but enjoyed himself in
middle-class society. He was understood to be one of the most
cultivated members of the archducal house. He speaks and writes ten or
a dozen languages correctly, and has a knowledge of mathematics and
astronomy which would qualify him to occupy a professorial chair in
any University in the world. He is also an experienced navigator of
the seas. At Salzburg, where he lived for a long time, he became very
popular. His superiors considered him too considerate to the soldiers
serving under his orders. His relations with his father continued to
be extremely cordial even after he had retired from the army. It is
absolutely untrue to say that he has been compelled to abandon the
profession of arms; but the resignation of his titles involved the
resignation of his commission. Note that of all his Orders he has kept
only the modest Cross of Merit bestowed upon the young Archduke by the
Emperor himself for saving two men from drowning.”
Decidedly the Archduke Leopold had the _beau rôle_ on that occasion.
Not only did he leave the Swiss Court without a stain on his character,
but his calumniator narrowly escaped imprisonment for defamation, and
had to pay a heavy fine. It was at about this date that Signor Toselli
made his acquaintance, and was inspired to the following pen portrait
of the Archduke:—
“He was a tall, fine man, fair, stout, loud-voiced, and genial. He
lived in an English boarding-house, where he did exactly as he liked.
He trailed about most of the day in carpet slippers.”
Some may think that that was carrying liberty to the verge of licence;
but it is perhaps not less natural for an Archduke unwittingly to
infringe the etiquette of boarding-houses than for a _parvenu_ to
infringe the etiquette of Courts. In Austria, it has been said, the
aristocracy dare not ask the professors to dinner for fear lest, if
they were worldly enough to dress for the banquet, they should wear
green ties with their dress clothes. Herr Wulfling, at any rate, spoke
his mind about Courts and Kings—and also about his sister:—
“Court life is stupid, dull, and wretched. Everything about it is
insufferable. I cannot breathe at Court. A free man has the world at
his feet, but a Prince or King is the puppet of his surroundings.”
And also, on another occasion:—
“Kings are just like other men. Not one in a hundred is worth a cent;
perhaps even that is an exaggerated estimate. As for my sister, she is
a crazy creature. At her age she might surely keep out of mischief.”
That was rather an unkind criticism, especially so soon after he and
Princess Louisa had made the plunge into the simple life together; but
it appears that, though Princess Louisa had, like her brother, the
courage of her convictions, she was more a creature of impulse, more
inclined to pose, and less consistent in her view of the obligations of
simplicity. Half the journalists of Europe had assembled at Geneva, as
we have seen, to give her a gallery to play to; and she played to that
gallery like an operatic star, taking the air with M. Giron daily, amid
the applause of the collected populace, and thereby somewhat shocking
the opinion of the rigid City of Calvin. This is how, speaking to the
wife of an artist who called on her, she manifested her joy in her
emancipation:—
“What a happy woman you must be to be married to an artist who has a
high standard, and tries to make his life square with it! Then you
are free to do as you please, to dress as you like, to wear out your
clothes. I have often to dress six times a day.”
Perhaps. But Princess Louisa had engaged the whole of the first floor
of the Hotel d’Angleterre for herself and her suite; and it was
remarked that this proceeding seemed to reflect an Archduchess’s rather
than an ascetic’s conception of simplicity. It was remarked, too, that
her literary tastes, in so far as these could be inferred from the
books which she borrowed from the Geneva libraries, appeared to be of a
decadent modernity. Her favourite authors were discovered to be Gérard
de Nerval and Baudelaire: excellent authors, indeed, but not authors
whose message is for the simple and unsophisticated.
But let that pass: this work is not the life of Princess Louisa of
Tuscany. Nor need we dwell upon the withdrawal of M. Giron from
the Princess’s _entourage_, or upon her own nervous breakdown and
consequent retreat into a _maison de santé_. Very possibly the two
events had some connection with each other; but it does not matter. Nor
does the behaviour of M. Giron himself matter, though it is impossible
not to commend him, before one dismisses him, for the chivalry with
which he has kept silence. At the height of the romantic battle,
indeed, he was no more discreet than the rest, and could hardly be
expected to be so. He was very young; and he evidently believed that
great things had happened, and that still greater things were about
to happen. If he and Princess Louisa were going to defy the Habsburg
system by living happily together ever afterwards, there was no reason
why their gestures should not be as defiant as their actions; but that,
as it turned out, was not to be.
Once more there were wheels within wheels; once more there was an
interposition of some sort which threw the machinery out of gear. There
is some reason to believe that the interposition was of a pecuniary
character, though none for believing that M. Giron himself was “bought
off.” But the day nevertheless came when M. Giron discovered that his
mission was terminated. As Princess Louisa puts it:—
“M. Giron did not remain long in Switzerland. My reputation being
thoroughly compromised by his presence, my object was achieved, and he
therefore returned to Brussels.”
It is rather a cold-blooded way of putting it. M. Giron may well have
felt that Princess Louisa was resuming as a woman all the rights which
she had forfeited as an Archduchess. But he raised no public protest at
the time, and he has raised none since, though the wealthy proprietors
of sensational newspapers have often tempted him to do so. One need
seek no other explanation than the fact that he was a gentleman, too
chivalrous to bear malice if there was any to be borne, conscious that
his chivalry had led him into mistaken courses, and only anxious that
the world should forget his error. After all, how many private tutors
of his tender age, however respectably connected, can lay their hands
upon their hearts and vow that they, in his place, would have been
irresponsive to the appeal of a fascinating Crown Princess?
But let that pass too; for our business is only with Princess Louisa,
and with her only in so far as her case illustrates the failure of the
Habsburg system, and the impulse of the family to revolt, as it were,
against itself. No theory of her possessing a double dose of original
sin can justly be invoked to account for her proceedings. The impulse
to revolt was as physiologically sound in her case as in any of the
others; but it was stirred in her too late. She was too radically
affected to be saved by it. There is something pathetic in the picture
of her efforts to recover her balance—so desperate, yet so unavailing.
In her restlessness, if in nothing else, she reminds one a little of
the Empress Elizabeth. One sees her, as one sees the Empress, driven
continually from place to place, seeking she knows not exactly what,
but always failing to find it; but one does not see her, as one sees
the Empress, guarding her secret like a delicate flame which must at
all costs be sheltered from the wind. Her disposition is, rather,
to expose the flame to all the winds which blow, in the hope that
one or other of them may fan it to a blaze. For she is, after all, a
Habsburg; and that is how the Habsburgs differ from the Wittelsbachs.
The contrast has been pointed out already; but the point may be made
again—in French, because there is no exact equivalent in English for
the French phrases. The typical Wittelsbach, sane or insane, is _tout
en dedans_; the typical Habsburg, conventional or unconventional, is
_tout en dehors_.
Princess Louisa’s career exemplified the distinction when she bicycled
in the Park with the dentist, and when she summoned M. Giron to
Switzerland to compromise her. A further illustration of it was
furnished when she affianced herself to that promising young pianist,
Signor Toselli. The contrast leaps to the eyes in Signor Toselli’s
report of the first compliments which she paid him:—
“I love the society of artists. Their views are so noble and so
generous. They are far above the petty prejudices of other men. Their
conversation is stimulating and inspiring. You cannot imagine how
badly they are treated at the Court of Dresden. They are simply paid
their fee and dismissed.”
Even M. Paderewski, the Princess added, would have been simply paid his
fee and dismissed, if she had not herself run forward, with tears in
her eyes, and clasped him by the hand.
The Wittelsbachs do not talk like that, but, entertaining similar
sentiments, act on them more quietly, and more as a matter of course.
Nor does one hear of the Wittelsbachs making their declarations of
love with that dramatic directness with which, if one may trust Signor
Toselli, who has not M. Giron’s instinct for reticence, Princess Louisa
made hers. One does not picture a Wittelsbach putting to a comparative
stranger the straight questions: “Have you ever loved?... Tell me, do
you feel capable of love?” Nor could one readily credit a Wittelsbach
with the naïve vanity of the following announcement of artistic aims
and gifts:—
“I shall write the words to your music. I feel a hitherto unused
talent stirring within me. I can also do sculpture.”
What wonder if Signor Toselli, being only twenty-four, was persuaded by
such exclamations that all the fairy-tales were coming true? And that
though he was warned.
“Do you really know the Crown Princess of Saxony, sir?” said Countess
Fugger to him. “Do you realise her character and the life she has
led? Rather than commit such folly I would advise you to go into the
garden, this very instant, and put a bullet through your brain.”
But the warning fell upon deaf ears; and it is impossible to feel
surprise at its having done so—not only because a child was about to
be born, but also for a good many other reasons. Rank does not cease
to dazzle because the high-born condescend, but often dazzles all the
more effectively, by causing the lowly-born to feel at ease in their
preferment, as well as proud of it. The chances of really romantic
adventure, too, are rare in modern life; and a young musician is even
less likely than most other young men to turn his back on them in a
calculating spirit of sober self-restraint. The blaze of publicity is
not a thing from which the conditions of his calling have taught him to
shrink.
Signor Toselli did not shrink from it, and doubtless he enjoyed his
hour of rapture. He and his bride changed their names with the rapidity
of genius. At the office of the London Registrar, they were, of course,
Signor Toselli and Princess Louisa of Tuscany; but at the Hotel Cecil
they were Signor and Signora San Marcellino, and at the Norfolk Hotel
they were M. and Mme. Dubois. When they started for their honeymoon,
their railway carriage was besieged by reporters; and they may well
have believed that the acclamations of the world’s Press saluted their
definite entrance into the joys of an earthly Paradise.
But, if that was their belief, then they were mistaken in it. In
Princess Louisa’s case, as we have said, the hour of revolt had struck
too late. Her spiritual revolution was, in some respects, rather
like the great French Revolution, which continued to proceed from
excess to excess, and from extravagance to extravagance, long after
its ostensible purpose had been achieved. She might be able to “do
sculpture”; but there were certain other things, more important than
sculpture, which she found it impossible to do. Above all, she could
not settle down and keep her allegiance fixed. She had no sooner
settled down in one place than she wanted to move on and settle down
somewhere else. Like Little Joe, she was “allus a-moving on”; and the
meaningless migrations were a weariness of the flesh to her husband,
and a hindrance to his professional prospects. “You are killing
the artist in me,” he said to the woman who had once assured him that
artists were, of all men, the noblest and the worthiest to be loved.
[Illustration:
_Photo_ _Dover Street Studios_
PRINCESS LOUISA OF TUSCANY
(Ex-Crown Princess of Saxony).
]
After that there was estrangement, culminating in separation, but
mitigated by collaboration in a comic opera—the plot of it based upon
Princess Louisa’s recollection of certain incidents in her career as
Crown Princess of Saxony. The proof is clear that, in her case—if
not also in his—the passion for publicity has survived the passion
for romance; but the end is not yet, and is not likely to prove of a
significance which would warrant the suspension of the publication
of this work until it occurs. Princess Louisa’s story has been an
excursus, albeit a necessary one, seeing that it illustrates, even to
the point of absurdity, the Habsburg habit of doing melodramatic things
melodramatically, as if they felt conscious that, whether they sat on
thrones or slid off them, they owed at once an entertainment and an
object lesson to the admiring curiosity of the world.
And that, of course, is the reason why the Habsburgs have been at once
so interesting and so troublesome to the Head of their House. When they
have sinned, as he would account it—offended, at all events, against
the ancient traditions of the House—they have not been contented
to go out and sin quietly. They have, on the contrary, sinned, if
not strongly, at least demonstratively, as if their business was
everybody’s business, and it behoved both the Courts and the peoples
to take note. And Francis Joseph, on his part, has not failed to
take note, protesting, as it were, against Habsburg side-shows, and
re-asserting those Habsburg principles which the rebels have rejected,
with a vigour which sometimes reminds one of the last roar of a dying
lion.
We must return to him, though, in truth, there remains but little to be
said.