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One can hardly deny that Elisabeth showed a sense of humor during her escapades. She amused herself, for example, by leading the ever daring Prince of Wales (later, King Edward VII) up the garden path. A poem (probably exaggerated with her usual flights of fancy) records the scene.
“There is somebody coming upstairs”
Wir sassen im Drawing-room gemütlich beisammen
Prince Eduard und ich.
Er raspelte Süssholz und schwärmte,
Er sagte, er liebte mich.
Er rückte sehr nah und nahm meine Hand,
Und lispelte: Dear cousin, wie wär’s?
Ich lachte von Herzen und drohte:
“There is somebody coming upstairs.”
Wir lauschten, es war aber nichts,
Und weiter ging das lustige Spiel
Sir Eduard ward mutig,
Ja, er wagte auch viel.
Ich wehrte mich nicht, es war interessant,
Ich lachte: “Dear cousin, wie wär’s?”
Da ward er verlegen und flüsterte leis:
“There is somebody coming upstairs.”23
[We were sitting cosily together in the drawing room, / Prince Edward and I. / He whispered sweet nothings and raved on, / He said that he loved me. / He drew very close and took my hand, / And whispered, Dear cousin, how about it? / I laughed with all my heart and warned him, / “There is somebody coming upstairs.” We listened, but it was nothing, / And the merry game went on. / Sir Edward grew bold, / Yes, and very daring. / I did not protest, it was interesting, / I laughed, “Dear cousin, how about it?” / At that he grew embarrassed and whispered softly, / “There is somebody coming upstairs.”]
A man as well informed as Count Charles Bombelles, chamberlain to Crown Prince Rudolf, declared all the sensationalist gossip around the Empress to be untrue—and he was anything but a supporter of Elisabeth. In 1876, he mentioned “the extravagances of the Empress, but very innocent ones,” as Hübner noted in his diary. He, too, attributed a major part of Sisi’s behavior to the effects of her early very unhappy life in Vienna and the excessive severity of Archduchess Sophie. “One has placed one chain after another around this bottle of champagne, and finally the cork blew. It is a lucky thing that this explosion had no consequences other than the ones we see: unfettered preference for horses, hunting, and sports, as well as a secluded life, which is not easy to reconcile with the obligations of an empress.”24
The older Elisabeth grew and the more her shyness increased, the more she became trapped in her fantasies and her dream world. It was specifically in this area that her inhibited relations with men became evident.
Among the myths and legends that particularly caught the Empress’s fancy was the story of a legendary Egyptian queen who never grew old and who lived, veiled, in a mysterious place. Her name had long ago been forgotten. “She” retained her power not to age, but only so long as she did not give herself in love to a man.25 Elisabeth, too, was unapproachable, with the deep fear that love might rob her of her power and aura.
In her poems, she saw herself most often as Titania, Queen of the Fairies. The unsuccessful suitors were represented as donkeys. Every castle where the Empress lived boasted a painting of Titania with the donkey. Elisabeth to Christomanos: “That is the ass’s head of our illusions, which we caress ceaselessly…. I never get tired of looking at it.”26
In almost all her poems, Franz Joseph is depicted as Oberon, King of the Fairies, standing by Titania’s side. Occasionally, however, Elisabeth included even her husband in the ranks of her admirers, which was probably a realistic view of the attitude he demonstrated toward her for the world to see.
In all these poems, the influence of Heinrich Heine is all too plain: His laments about false love, about lies and disappointments also appear in Elisabeth’s verses. After she had stopped riding so abruptly, she lived in total seclusion, remained far away from Vienna, sought solitude and nature, and did not miss the company of men.
Her poems also dealt with the dead and with heroes of legend, such as Heine and her favorite Achilles. It is hard to distinguish where, in her feelings, infatuation stops and the yearning for death begins. Both are quite certainly evident in Elisabeth’s dabbling with spiritualism. She no longer found anyone among the living who understood her. She was too sensitive, too vulnerable for a real, “normal” relationship with a man. She therefore took refuge in fantasy relations with dead heroes, who could not hurt her.
No matter how florid some of these poems and fantasies might be, reality was much more ordinary. Many of Elisabeth’s statements and poems give indications of an extreme tension when it comes to sexuality. Only in her poems did Titania lower herself to the ass. In reality, she loathed love.
Für mich keine Liebe,
Für mich keinen Wein;
Die eine macht übel,
Der andere macht spei’n!
Die Liebe wird sauer,
Die Liebe wird herb;
Der Wein wird gefälschet
Zu schnödem Erwerb.
Doch falscher als Weine
Ist oft noch die Lieb’;
Man küsst sich zum Scheine
Und fühlt sich ein Dieb!
Für mich keine Liebe,
Für mich keinen Wein;
Die eine macht übel,
Der andre macht spei’n!27
[For me no love, / For me no wine; / The one makes you ache, / The other makes you ill! / / Love grows sour, / Love grows bitter; / The wine is doctored / For base gain. / / But more false than wine / Often is love; / We pretend to be kissing / And feel like thieves! / / For me no love, / For me no wine; / The one makes you ache, / The other makes you ill!]
There are more examples of this sort. As has been seen, Elisabeth may be retrospectively diagnosed as a victim of anorexia nervosa. Psychologists now believe that this disorder is caused by a deep revulsion against everything that is physical and voluptuous, but most especially against sexuality.
Even when her favorite daughter, Marie Valerie, married and became pregnant, Elisabeth could not conceal her distaste. She knew nothing to say to the extremely young wife and prospective mother except that she “sighed for ‘the good old times, when I was still an innocent virgin’ … yes sometimes, joking in her peculiar way, she said that looking at my changed figure made her altogether impatient and that she was ‘ashamed of me.’”28
At times, Elisabeth’s tried-and-true game—unapproachable goddess and infatuated ass—turned into a real jest. In the late 1880s—the Empress was at least fifty years old—a young man from Saxony named Alfred Gurniak Lord Schreibendorf began to dog her footsteps. He followed her as far as Romania, pursuing her with endlessly long, florid love letters and urgent pleas for proof of her favor. Elisabeth remained aloof. But she saved Alfred’s letters and made them the basis of a cynical poem, “Titania and Alfred,” which she never completed.
There is no doubt that for the Empress, this overwrought young man was merely a figure of ridicule. Nevertheless, her thoughts dealt so intensely with the matter that she composed many pages of poetry about it. Surely she also kept the “enchanted stag” Alfred in thrall by offering now and again tiny proofs of her favor (such as flowers deliberately left behind on a park bench). She saw the episode not only as a cause for merriment, but also as a welcome distraction in her empty life.
Among the many lines about her admirer Alfred, however, we also find the revealing lines:
Besitzest du den kecken Mut,
Mich jemals zu erreichen?
Doch tödted meine kalte Glut,
Ich tanze gem auf Leichen.
[Are you so bold and brave / As to reach me ever? / But my cold fire kills, / And I will stop at nothing.]
And in another poem, “Titania’s Spinnlied” (Titania’s Spinning Song), some very similar lines occur.
Du willst ein Spiel der Minne,
Verrückter Erdensohn?
Mit goldnen Fäden spinne
Dein Leichentuch ich schon….
In meiner schönen Mache
Verzapple dich zu Tod,
Ich schaue zu und lache
Von jetzt bis Morgenrot.
[You want a game of love, / Mad mortal? / With golden threads I am already / Spinning your shroud…. / / In my handsome net / Enmesh yourself until you die, / I stand by and laugh / From now until dawn.]
But in spite of threats of suicide, Alfred had no real intention of becoming a corpse. Instead, he demanded money from his idol. For this, too, Elisabeth had only scorn.
Ich glaube nicht an die Liebe,
Was dir dein Leben vergällt,
Das sind ganz andere Triebe,
Ich ahne wohl was dir fehlt.
Mein Jüngling, du hast wohl Schulden
Und wähnst in schlauem Sinn:
Die Liebe mit goldenen Gulden
Lohnt mir meine Königin.29
[I do not believe in love, / What is souring your life / Are quite different urges, / I truly sense what you need. / My boy, surely you have debts / And imagine slyly: / My queen will repay me / My love with golden guldens.]
This farce of “Titania and Alfred” is not as trivial as it may at first glance seem in the context of a biography. It characterized Elisabeth’s relations with her admirers, as well as her inability to separate reality from fantasy. The fact that she spent many hours composing the Alfred poems shows the extent of her isolation.
The episode with Alfred Gurniak took place in 1887–1888, a time of crises in the Balkans and the constant threat of war, a time when the European system of alliances was changing in fundamental ways through the Reinsurance Treaty between Germany and Russia, concluded behind the back of Austria-Hungary. During this time, two men politically close to the Empress—Gyula Andrássy and Crown Prince Rudolf—voiced opposition to the Emperor’s foreign policy. Both expected and hoped for backing from the only person whose word could have gained the Emperor’s ear—the Empress. Elisabeth evaded all expectations and all hopes. She abandoned both Andrássy and Rudolf, just as for decades she had abandoned her husband with his problems. She showed the world her contempt—and concentrated on the jest of infatuated Alfred from Dresden.
The tragedy of Crown Prince Rudolf was coming to a head. Elisabeth was so caught up in her reveries of Titania, Queen of the Fairies, and various besotted asses that she did not even acknowledge her son’s unhappiness, though repeatedly, with extreme shyness and caution, he asked for her help.
*
The seductiveness of Elisabeth’s personality outlived even her beauty. In the 1890s, when her skin had long since become wrinkled and her sight had grown blurred, she still, when she made the effort, exerted her usual magic. The young Greek readers who accompanied her during these years fell in love with the solitary, melancholy woman, and for the rest of their lives they raved about the hours they had been allowed to spend in her company. Konstantin Christomanos, for one, wrote gushy and lyrical books about her. The people around Elisabeth, however, felt sorry for these young men. Chief Chamberlain Nopcsa wrote to Ida Ferenczy that the Empress was spoiling the Greeks “in a way I have never yet witnessed in Her Majesty. Pity the young man, since he will be made unhappy.”30
Even Alexander von Warsberg, who at the outset had been very critical of the Empress, gave clear signs of love after only a short time of traveling in Greece with her.
It hardly needs repeating that Emperor Franz Joseph’s love for his wife remained constant through all the years, in spite of everything.
Notes
1. Festetics, October 15, 1872.
2. Ibid., February 6, 1872.
3. Ibid., June 21, 1878.
4. Ibid., January 21, 1875.
5. Ibid., February 6, 1874.
6. Corti Papers, from Budapest, April 14, 1869.
7. Ibid., from Gödöllö, April 30, 1869.
8. Ibid., January 31, 1867.
9. Ibid., December 18, 1868.
10. Ibid., September 6, 1868.
11. Ibid., January 1870.
12. Ibid., July 8, 1868, and June 22, 1867.
13. StBW, manuscript collection, Friedjung Papers, Interview with Marie Festetics, March 6, 1913.
14. To her niece Amélie, Valerie, September 3, 1908.
15. Wallersee, Vergangenheit, pp. 93f.
16. Quoted here from Pacher’s reports, contained in Corti Papers. A slightly different version appears in Corti, Elisabeth, pp. 254ff.
17. Elisabeth, Nordseelieder, p. 96.
18. Corti, Elisabeth, pp. 350f.
19. Elisabeth, Nordseelieder, p. 61.
20. Elisabeth, manuscript. Already in Corti, Elisabeth, pp. 384ff.
21. Festetics, January 9, 1874.
22. Marie Louise von Wallersee, Kaiserin Elisabeth und ich (Leipzig, 1935), pp. 60ff.
23. Ibid., p. 59. A longer and weaker version of this poem in Elisabeth, Winterlieder, pp. 206–9.
24. Hübner, May 23, 1876.
25. Wallersee, Elisabeth, p. 202.
26. Konstantin Christomanos, Tagebuchblätter (Vienna, 1899), pp. 98–9.
27. Elisabeth, Nordseelieder, p. 59.
28. Valerie, September 4, 1891.
29. These lines and the compilation “Titania und Alfred” are in the unpaginated manuscript section of the literary bequest in Bern.
30. Corti Papers, from Barcelona, February 6, 1893.
* This refrain alternates with every one of the following lines.
CHAPTER TEN
EAGLE AND SEAGULL
The more Elisabeth’s tendency to withdraw from the world and her fear of people increased, the more closely she became attached to her cousin King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who had turned out very like her. The relationship between the two had not begun as a particularly close one. There had been significant quarrels, rooted in family relations; the rivalry between the royal and the ducal Bavarian lines was generations old. The kinship was not very close: Ludwig’s grandfather, King Ludwig I, and Sisi’s mother, Ludovika, were brother and sister, making Sisi the cousin of Ludwig’s father, King Max II. The eight-year difference in their ages played a large part in their early years; when Elisabeth left Bavaria in 1854 at the age of sixteen, the then Crown Prince Ludwig was only eight years old.
Ten years later, Ludwig became King. From approximately this time on—Ludwig was eighteen, Elisabeth twenty-six—they grew closer. Shortly after his accession in 1864, the young King visited his imperial cousin in Bad Kissingen, where he remained for some time, going on walks with her and talking with her so intimately and in such detail that Sisi told her family, “delighted by their being in unison, of many shared hours”—making her favorite brother, Karl Theodor (“Gackel”) jealous.1
Elisabeth and Ludwig attracted attention wherever they went. The young King was exquisitely beautiful, tall, serious, with a romantic flair; beside him, his Wittelsbach cousin, in full bloom, tall and slender, slightly sickly and melancholy. Ludwig’s effect on the court at Munich was much like Sisi’s in Vienna. According to Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg, he strutted, “handsome as a golden pheasant, among all the domestic hens.”2
Both Ludwig and Sisi felt contempt for their world and indulged themselves in ever new eccentricities to shock those around them. Both made their likes and dislikes extremely plain, especially Ludwig. When, for example, he had a guest whom he did not like, he had huge bouquets of flowers placed on the table, so as not to have to look at the miserable wretch.3 The guest, for his part, had to make desperate efforts to make himself heard.
Both loved solitude and hated court constraints. The following sentences by Ludwig II could just as easily have come from Elisabeth’s pen, except that Munich, and not Vienna, was meant. “Shut up in my golden cage … Can barely wait for the arrival of those blessed days in May to leave for a long time the hated, accursed city to which nothing ties me, which I inhabit with insurmountable loathing.”4
Elisabeth, too, liked to act unconventionally and irritated the rigidly conformist people around her with unusua
l expressions, often to such an extent that some concluded that she, too, was at the very least “peculiar,” like her Bavarian cousin. Marie Larisch:
In many things the Empress was very like Ludwig II, but unlike him, had the mental and physical strength not to fall prey to eccentric ideas. She was wont to say, half seriously, half joking: “I know that sometimes I am considered mad.” As she spoke, she wore a mocking smile, and her golden-brown eyes flashed like heat lightning in restrained mischievousness. Everyone who knew Elisabeth well wrote about her pleasure in teasing innocents. Thus, with the straightest face, she could sometimes say the most outrageous things or, with an enchanting smile, throw an elegant indiscretion at someone, in order, as she put it, to enjoy her listener’s gape. Unless you knew Elisabeth through and through, it was sometimes hard to decide if she was saying something seriously or was only joking.5