The Emperor also twice visited his wife in Venice. He used his stays, however, mainly for troop inspections and parades, occasionally taking three-year-old Rudolf along.
When she had no visitors, Sisi struggled with her major problem: boredom. Her favorite occupation during later years, hiking, was impossible because of her chronically swollen feet. She was chained, therefore, to the house most of the time; she spent the long days playing cards, reading a little, and collecting photographs.
First she procured pictures of family members, including her favorites among the servants in her parents’ home and the nursemaids who looked after the children during her absences from Vienna. She extended the collection more and more, including diplomats, court officials, aristocrats, and finally her favorite actors, as well as (true daughter of Duke Max of Bavaria) jugglers and clowns. She devoted special zeal to collecting the photographs of famous beauties, asking Austrian diplomats to send her pictures of beautiful women from Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Constantinople.48
*
In May 1862, after a stay of almost a year in Corfu and Venice, the Empress, still gravely ill, arrived in Reichenau an der Rax and from there, on Dr. Fischer’s orders, traveled on to Bad Kissingen to take the cure—without stopping in Vienna. This time the diagnosis was dropsy. Once again, the physician in charge of the case was Dr. Fischer, who had an intimate acquaintance with the Duke of Bavaria’s family, along with its many eccentricities.
Sisi’s condition improved quickly under Dr. Fischer’s rigorous, probably also psychologically adroit treatment. As early as July, Die Presse reassured “the minds of those who imagined the exalted invalid to be in the final stages of pulmonary tuberculosis,” though the newspaper did mention a new diagnosis, this time a “disease of the blood-forming organs (lymph nodes and spleen).”49
A week later, a reporter on the same paper wrote, “I saw the Empress, who a few weeks ago had almost to be carried, repeatedly promenading for hours at the Curplatz without resting, without coughing even once, although she was engaged in conversation most of the time.”50 At the festive illumination and the fireworks which Kissingen organized on the occasion of her recovery, the Empress, in good spirits, appeared on the arm of her father, Duke Max. Max, as well as Sisi’s favorite brother, Karl Theodor, had taken the Kissengen cure with her. One can only speculate about the extent of her father’s concern with Sisi’s health.
*
Yet even now Sisi did not trust herself to return to Vienna. Once again she fled to Possenhofen. Among her brothers and sisters, in the familiar, noisy, bohemian atmosphere of the manor, she summoned up her strength before the unavoidable return to the Viennese court and married life.
The court ladies who traveled with her outdid each other in relating horror stories about the “beggars’ household” and loose practices of Elisabeth’s parents’ home. To them, Possenhofen was a place “that has caused us many a vexation.” The pedigrees of the Bavarian court ladies, they pointed out, were far from impeccable. Therese Fürstenberg, one of Archduchess Sophie’s ladies-in-waiting, for example, wrote to Austria, “My colleagues, five in number, with one exception owe their existence to cooks, tradesmen’s daughters, and the like; they are pretty good souls on the whole, but a few nevertheless reveal their maternal heritage.” The noise, she reported, was earsplitting, the table manners were impossible; “and the Duchess [that is, Elisabeth’s mother], who lives for her dogs, always has some on her lap next to her or under her arm and cracks fleas on the dinner plates! But the plates are replaced at once!”51
Greater contrasts than those between Vienna and Possenhofen can hardly be imagined. The same lady-in-waiting described imperial family life in Vienna. “You have no idea, by the way, how boring and uncomfortable such an exalted family circle is, and yet one is inclined to believe that being among themselves would do them good; but there they sit, according to rank and speak according to rank or rather do not speak; bore each other and are glad when the family party is over. Really, it often makes you sorry to see what a sad life they lead and how they have no idea how to make it more pleasant for themselves; each one lives in isolation, alone, cultivates his boredom or pursues his ‘private pleasures.’”52
That a young woman such as Elisabeth would try to escape this monotonous life, preferring the Possenhofen idyll, was met with a total lack of understanding at the Viennese court. After all, Elisabeth was an empress-queen, for whom such supersensitivity was not fitting.
In Possenhofen she met her “Italian” sisters, ex-Queen Marie of Naples and Countess Mathilde Trani (“Spatz”). They too had fled to “Possi,” leaving their husbands behind in Rome.
That there were difficulties in Marie’s marriage all the family knew. Queen Marie of Saxony, for example, wrote that the King of Naples was “very undeveloped when it comes to marital love, with all the affection and admiration he expresses to others about Marie, he is nevertheless said never to have let her near his heart, though, as she used to say, she made every effort.” She hinted that the young husband suffered from phimosis (tightness or constriction of the orifice of the prepuce), making intercourse impossible.53
Mathilde’s husband (a younger brother of the ex-King of Naples), on the other hand, was very merry and not inclined to take his marriage vows very seriously. Ludovika on her two daughters, Marie and Mathilde: “I would have wished them husbands who had more character and knew how to give them guidance, of which both are still in great need; but good as the two brothers are, they are no support to their wives.”54
In Rome, the two sisters were constantly together, and they shared secrets. With Mathilde’s help, ex-Queen Marie began a love affair with a Belgian count, an officer in the Papal Guard. Mathilde was said to console herself with a Spanish grandee. After a few happy months, retribution set in: Marie became pregnant. In dire straits, she fled to Possenhofen under the pretext of illness. Dr. Fischer took her under his wing. Poor Ludovika was in a flurry of excitement. Duke Max, however, kept his composure: “Well, all right, such things happen,” he said. “What’s the point of cackling?”55
In the midst of this situation and adding to it, Sisi came to Possenhofen. What the three sisters talked about during these weeks, in what ways they influenced each other, we do not know. Whatever the case, it is certain that their relationships had changed. Now it was the oldest, Elisabeth, at twenty-four, who was instructed by both her younger sisters. Sisi could not keep pace with Marie’s and Mathilde’s adventures. But with horror she also became aware of Marie’s poor emotional state and her utter unhappiness following the separation from the man she loved.
Marie’s regrettable frame of mind (the true cause of which no one except the closest family members knew) was described at length in the newspapers. She was observed in the pilgrimage church of Altötting, spending hours in silent prayers. It was told that, in Sisi’s presence, she had said, “Oh, if only a bullet had struck me at Gaeta!”56
During their conversations, the sisters forgot the world around them. Sisi’s ladies-in-waiting, even her new chatelaine, Countess Königsegg, were deeply offended at being so constantly ignored—“because Her Majesty grows more and more estranged from her Austrian surroundings,” as Crenneville wrote in his diary.57
Though ex-Queen Marie had sent her Neapolitan retinue back to Naples, Elisabeth had brought a considerable body of servants to Possenhofen: hairdressers, footmen, and lesser servants, for whom there was no room in the small castle. The nearby inns had their hands full taking care of the Austrian overflow.
The unrest in his house, combined with the unremitting secret-mongering and whispering of his three older daughters, as well as the complaints of his wife, finally became too much for the hotheaded Duke Max. One of the rages for which he was famous in the family broke out; it ended with the three married daughters having to leave Possenhofen. Queen Marie of Saxony reported that her brother-in-law “suddenly was of the opinion that his daughters were a burden in his house: tha
t is why the reunion of the children in Possi, which was such a consolation to my poor Louise (that quietly suffering bearer of her cross!) came to a quick end.”58
In November 1862, in the Convent of St. Ursula in Augsburg, Marie gave birth in total secrecy, but she had to give the child, a girl, to its biological father. Her secret remained safe. Five months later, Marie returned to her husband in Rome. After the ex-King underwent an operation, and after Marie confessed, the marriage turned out to be fairly harmonious after all.
*
Duke Max’s putting his foot down made it impossible for Elisabeth to remain in Possenhofen any longer. She had to return to her husband. But there were further difficulties. The Emperor and his mother were spending the summer in Bad Ischl; but Sisi refused adamantly to go anywhere near her mother-in-law. The imperial adjutant general, Count Crenneville, moaned in his diary, “Oh, women, women!!!! with or without a crown, dressed in silk or percale, have caprices and few are exempt.”59
A few days before the Emperor’s birthday on August 18, 1862, the Empress returned to Vienna on very short notice. Franz Joseph wrote his mother in Bad Ischl “how happy I am to have Sisi with me again and thus finally, after doing without for so long, to possess an ‘at home.’ The reception by the populace of Vienna was truly very warm and agreeable. It has been a long time since there have been such good spirits here.”60
Even on this happy occasion, however, the newspapers did not muffle their demands to the Imperial House. “The land is glad of the recovery of its Princess,” wrote the Morgen-Post, for example, “may the Princess also soon find cause to be pleased in the same measure at the full recovery of the country from all the wounds with which it is still afflicted, from all the evils from which it still suffers. May she live happily by the side of her imperial consort among a happy people!”61
The imperial couple was minutely observed. During the past two years, there had been so much gossip about Elisabeth that her every gesture was grounds for discussion. One lady-in-waiting wrote, “His expression as he lifted her out of the carriage I will never forget. I find her blooming but not natural looking, her expression forced and nervous au possible, her color so high that I find her heated, hectic, and not quite swollen anymore but very fat and changed in the face.”62
In a letter to her father, Archduchess Therese described how Sisi received her relatives in Schönbrunn. “She was friendly but nevertheless stiff; during the trip the poor thing vomited 4 times and with it a severe migraine. She told Aunt Elisabeth that her eyes were so swollen, that she cried so terribly when she had to leave her dear Possi; she arose at 4 in the morning to walk around the garden before her departure.” Therese also mentioned that one of the houses festively decorated to welcome the Empress sported the ambiguous banner, “Good, strong constitution, long life!”63
The fact that Sisi arrived in Vienna, not alone, but accompanied by her brothers, was also an occasion for biting comments. “The fact that Prince Karl Theodor came along is proof of how much she dreads being alone with him and with us.” Every glance and every gesture made by the Empress and the Emperor were observed. “At least in front of us, she is very friendly with him, talkative and natural, alla camera there may be many differences of opinion, that becomes apparent sometimes.”64
It was by no means true that after Sisi’s return, the imperial family lived together in cozy domesticity. The children were on vacation in Reichenau; Emperor Franz Joseph had no intention of giving up the hunts, which often took him away for several days; Sisi traveled back and forth between Vienna, Reichenau, and Passau, where she met her mother and her sisters. Archduchess Sophie continued to stay in Bad Ischl, and Emperor Franz Joseph visited her there for more than two weeks, while Sisi stayed behind in Vienna and her sister Helene came to visit once more. The ladies-in-waiting were pleased whenever Helene was with the Empress: “She always has a calming effect, is herself so reasonable and decent and tells her the truth.”65
During the nearly two years of separation from her husband and the society of the Viennese court, the Empress had changed. She had become very self-confident and brisk and had learned to assert her interests vigorously. The Emperor, living in constant fear that at the first sign of discord she might run off again and do further damage to the prestige of the August House, treated her circumspectly, showing infinite patience.
He was considerate of Sisi’s sensibilities, personally protesting the constant surveillance by omnipresent police agents. He wrote firmly to his adjutant general
I beg you to put a stop to the uniformed and supposedly secret surveillance system that surrounds us and that once again flourishes quite extraordinarily. When we go walking in the gardens, we are followed and watched at every step; when the Empress goes into her little garden or goes horseback riding, literally a regiment of guards hides behind the trees, and even when we take a pleasure drive, we find the same familiar faces wherever we end up, so that I have now invented the subterfuge of calling out a false destination to the coachman as we set off, in order to mislead the staff adjutant, and not until we have left the castle grounds do I advise the coachman where he is to go. Really, it’s enough to make one laugh.
Aside from the impression that must of necessity be made on the public by these measures, which betray fear and are carried out very crudely and conspicuously—living like prisoners, being constantly watched and spied upon is not to be endured. FJ66
Hardly had the Empress regained her health than all hopes turned on a further offspring in the imperial family. Though a crown prince was assured, the Emperor wanted a second son to secure the succession. In this situation, Sisi found support and help in her old family physician, Privy Councillor Dr. Fischer. He firmly declared that for the present, there could be no thought of “new expectations”; he advised that “repeated use of Kissingen” (with one stay at the spa a year, this meant a delay of several years at least) had to precede any such plans.67
In the meantime, Sisi returned to hiking and horseback riding. One of the ladies-in-waiting commented, “If one lacks inner peace altogether, one thinks that keeping on the move will make life easier, and she is by now only too used to this.”68
Elisabeth fled into solitude. The ladies-in-waiting made fun of her “eternal promenades in the evenings alone in the little garden.” As often as she could, she refused all company, getting her way, for example, in “being allowed to go alone through the gallery into the Oratorium,” which was contrary to court protocol.69 For an empress had to be an empress at all times, with appropriate entourage; she could not scurry alone through the long corridors of the Hofburg like a shy doe, as Sisi liked to do.
Nevertheless, she took part in the most important functions. She appeared at the court ball and at the Corpus Christi procession—and promptly became the center of a crowd.
The guests of the imperial family who met the young Empress during this time on public occasions were uniformly cool in their judgments. Typical is a letter from the Prussian Crown Princess Victoria, to her mother, Queen Victoria. Though she praised Sisi’s beauty and amiability, she did not hold back her criticism.
Very shy and timid, she speaks little. It is really difficult to keep a conversation going, for she seems to know very little and to have only minimal interests. The Empress neither sings nor draws or plays the piano and hardly ever speaks about her children…. The Emperor seems smitten with her, but I do not have the impression that she is with him. He seems most insignificant, very unassuming and simple, and he looks—as one would not believe from his paintings and photographs—old and wrinkled, while his reddish moustache and his sidewhiskers are very unbecoming to him. Franz Joseph is very little—or rather, not at all—talkative, all in all extremely “insignificant.”70
In the fall of 1863, the “Mexican affair” was settled. Archduke Max agreed to assume the crown of Mexico, moved by his ambitious wife, Carlotta, his dissatisfaction with Austria, and his increasingly deteriorating relationship with his brother the
Emperor. Archduchess Sophie—like the young Empress, who had always felt close to Max—was outraged at his willingness to undertake the adventure. Neither woman had any faith that it would turn out well. Even in the court party, hardly anyone took a rosy view of the plan, though some might have hoped that Max, who caused considerable discomfort by his liberal stance, might never return to Austria.
In his castle of Miramar near Trieste, Maximilian steeped himself in his fantasy of Mexico. Elisabeth called this residence “Max’s most beautiful poem, which shows so clearly what a poetic soul his was, filled with a dream of beauty, though unfortunately also with a longing for power and fame, for everywhere were affixed insignia and allegories of the new position, intended to tell of a powerful empire the Habsburg scion founded across the seas.”71
In April 1864, the new Emperor of Mexico and his wife set out for an uncertain, eventually tragic, future. Sophie’s diary noted with gratitude that Sisi was showing deep compassion for her, the deeply stricken mother. Sophie had long ago abandoned her preference for Carlotta. By this time, she shared Elisabeth’s dislike of the ambitious wife of the once so merry Max. Sophie suspected that the parting was a final one, and she wrote as much in her diary. The last dinner with Max seemed to her like a “last meal (before execution).”72
In February 1864, Sisi had another opportunity to demonstrate her Samaritan services. At the Nordbahnhof, the wounded from the war in Schleswig-Holstein arrived. Austria was fighting on the side of Prussia against little Denmark. Franz Joseph to Sophie: “The alliance with Prussia is the only correct policy, but they make it hard with their lack of principle and their boorish recklessness.”73 Few in Vienna understood that Schleswig-Holstein was merely another milestone in Bismarck’s road to a war between Prussia and Austria.
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