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Marie Valerie, by now twenty-one years old, stood by helplessly as the daily friction continued. Though increasingly incensed with her father because of the ever more important position given to Katharina Schratt, she was able to write in her diary in the autumn of 1889, “If it was always difficult to keep up a conversation with Papa even halfway, it has become almost impossible since he was struck by the deep sorrow of this winter. … I understand that being with him, without any point of contact except their pain—and even this of such different sorts—oppresses Mama. On those occasions, she is even more desolate than when we are alone … when she thinks ahead and sees years of this life stretching before her.”85
Valerie longed to get “out of this sad atmosphere into a more healthy sphere of action.”86 Her parents’ unhappiness in their marriage was a heavy burden on her. “I tell myself in deepest sorrow that this heavy suffering, instead of bringing … my parents closer together, has separated them even more (because neither understands the pain of the other).”87
It was in this very period of abysmal despair that the disturbing news arrived of the hopeless state of Gyula Andrássy’s health. In February 1890, he died. Elisabeth visited his widow in Budapest; she told Valerie “that it was not until now that she knew what she had in Andrássy; for the ist time she felt completely abandoned, without adviser or friend.”88
Three months later—in May 1890—Elisabeth rushed to the deathbed of her sister Helene Thurn und Taxis in Regensburg. Valerie recorded the sisters’ last conversation.
Aunt Néné, did not believe in death at all, was glad to see Mama and said to her, “Old Sisi”—she and Mama almost always spoke English together.
“We two have hard puffs in our lives,” said Mama.
“Yes, but we had hearts,” replied Aunt Néné.89
Thirty-seven years had passed since the summer in Bad Ischl that had determined their lives. Both sisters had been surrounded by splendor and glitter, immense material wealth and an enormous inner void. After a short, happy marriage, Helene had been a widow for over twenty years. Her spirits were darkened by depression and melancholy. Helene’s last words, made a deep impression on the Empress: “Ah, yes, but life is a sorrow and a misery.”
Elisabeth’s increasing longing for death saddened all those close to her. Valerie: “Mama will probably never again be as she was at one time; she envies Rudolf his death, and day and night she longs for her own.”90 A month later: “Mama says that she is too old and too tired to struggle, her wings are singed, and the only thing she wants is rest. It would be the noblest deed if all parents would immediately kill every newborn child.”91
In October 1889, a circular was sent to all the Austrian representatives abroad informing them of the Empress’s wish that any felicitations on her name days and birthdays be omitted, “not only in the immediate future but for all time.” At the end of 1889, when the official year of mourning was coming to an end, the Empress gave away all her light-colored gowns, umbrellas, shoes, scarves, purses, and all accessories to Gisela and Valerie. She kept only the plain mourning outfits; for the rest of her days she did not wear colored dresses again.92 Her only concession was a simple pearl gray dress at Valerie’s wedding and at the christening of Valerie’s first child, little Elisabeth (Ella).
She also gave away her jewelry—the wealth of pearls, emeralds, diamonds. Most of these pieces went to her two daughters and to her granddaughter Erzsi. But she also remembered such relatives as her Bavarian sister-in-law Marie José, who was given a brooch with the remark, “It is a remembrance of the time when I was alive.”93 The Empress was determined to spend the years that were left her as a mater dolorosa, always dressed in black, far from all court splendor. The German ambassador in Vienna commented, “The Emperor puts up with even these regrettable oddities with great resignation and patience.”94
Elisabeth felt the marriage of her favorite daughter, Valerie, as a further blow of fate. “Mama seems dazed by deep melancholy, and all the more so because she can never understand why anyone would want to be married and would expect any good from a marriage.”95 Elisabeth left no doubt that she “finds marriage unnatural,” as the young bride confided to her diary.96 For Valerie, who had inherited her father’s practical cast of mind and who was looking forward to marriage, this melancholy, overwrought mother was a great emotional burden.
Marie Valerie’s wedding to Archduke Franz Salvator took place at the end of July 1890 in the parish church of Bad Ischl. Elisabeth as well as Valerie had forbidden all court ceremonial of the sort that had been taken for granted at Gisela’s and Rudolf’s weddings in Vienna. There was not even a nuptial mass—only a quiet mass for the immediate families preceding the wedding ceremony. This, too, was at the express wish of the Empress, who considered the usual solemn nuptial mass “too long.” Among the flower girls was little Erzsi, the Crown Prince’s daughter, barely seven years old. Anton Bruckner, whom the young Archduchess admired extravagantly and whom she sponsored, played the organ.
Valerie’s happiness was evident to see. She was the only child of the Emperor and Empress who married without court considerations and for love. Elisabeth, disconsolate at the loss of her favorite daughter, cautioned Valerie’s mother-in-law, Archduchess Marie Immaculata, even on the wedding day, not to visit the young couple during the honeymoon period “and not to interfere in anything.”97
Elisabeth’s visits to her daughter were infrequent and short. Time and again, she pointed out that a mother-in-law could only interfere with a young couple’s happiness. To Valerie, who always urged her mother to stay longer at Lichtenegg, she said, “precisely because she liked it so much here, she should not let herself get used to it. A seagull did not fit in a swallow’s nest, and a serene, happy family life was not her fate!”98
The Empress persisted in her conviction that now she had lost all her children.
Notes
1. Festetics, May 13, 1874.
2. Richard Sexau, Fürst und Arzt (Graz, 1963), p. 346.
3. Valerie, May 4, 1886.
4. Princess Stephanie of Belgium, Princess von Lonyay, Ich sollte Kaiserin werden (Leipzig, 1935), pp. 95f.
5. Elisabeth, Winterlieder, p. 169.
6. Valerie, May 29, 1884.
7. Index to Crown Prince Rudolf’s writings, in Brigitte Hamann, Rudolf Kronprinz und Rebell (Vienna, 1978), pp. 523–26.
8. Brigitte Hamann, Das Leben des Kronprinzen Rudolf nach neuen Quellen (PH.D. diss., Vienna, 1978), pp. 224–64.
9. The pamphlet is reprinted in its entirety in Brigitte Hamann, ed., Rudolf. Majestät ich warne Sie. Geheime und private Schriften (Vienna, 1979), pp. 19–52.
10. Hamann, Rudolf, p. 103.
11. Ibid.
12. Festetics, October 21, 1877.
13. Reprinted in Hamann, Majestät, pp. 55–78.
14. Hübner, June 12, 1879.
15. Ibid., June 18 and 19, 1879.
16. Ibid., September 24 and 25, 1879.
17. Rudolf, box 16, Prague, October 28, 1879.
18. Hamann, Rudolf, pp. 13f., from Prague, January 16, 1881.
19. Festetics, January 3, 1882.
20. Hamann, Rudolf, p. 303.
21. Elisabeth, manuscript.
22. Elisabeth, Nordseelieder, pp. 4f.
23. Stephanie, Ich sollte Kaiserin werden, p. 152, from Kremsier, August 25, 1885.
24. Hamann, Rudolf, p. 295, July 23, 1885.
25. Oskar Freiherr von Mitis, Das Leben des Kronprinzen Rudolf, revised by Adam Wandruszka (Vienna, 1971), from Prague, December 2, 1881.
26. Hamann, Rudolf, pp. 173f.
27. AA, Österreich 86, No. 1, Vol. I, secret, March 8, 1883.
28. Valerie, June 3, 1884.
29. Valerie, December 24, 1887.
30. StBW, manuscript collection, Friedjung Papers, Interview with Countess Marie Festetics, March 23, 1909.
31. Fritz Judtmann, Mayerling ohne Mythos (Vienna, 1968), pp. 18ff.
32. Valerie, August 18, 1883, and
others.
33. Corti Papers, Valerie, November 17, 1883.
34. Valerie, November 11, 1884.
35. Ibid., August 17, 1884.
36. Ibid., May 30, 1884.
37. Ibid., June 13, 1884.
38. Ibid., June 24, 1886.
39. Ibid., December 6, 1886.
40. Ibid., May 25, 1887.
41. Hamann, Rudolf, pp. 408ff.
42. Corti, Elisabeth, p. 401.
43. Valerie, May 23, 1887.
44. Ibid., February 6 and 7, 1887.
45. Ibid., May 22, 1887.
46. Ibid., May 13, 1888.
47. Ibid., March 4, 1889.
48. Ibid., August 6 and September 6, 1888.
49. Ibid., September 16, 1887.
50. Ibid., December 16, 1888.
51. Friedjung Papers, Interview with M. Festetics, March 23, 1909.
52. Ibid.
53. All quotations by Valerie concerning Mayerling, February 8, 1889.
54. Stephanie, p. 203.
55. Hamann, Rudolf, pp. 109f.
56. Corti, Elisabeth, pp. 419f.
57. Corti Papers, Copied from Valerie’s diary.
58. Valerie, February 8, 1889.
59. Friedjung Papers, Interview with Marie Festetics, March 23, 1909.
60. Sexau, Fürst und Arzt, p. 352.
61. Valerie, quoted from Corti Papers.
62. Valerie, June 29, 1890.
63. Ibid., February 18, 1889.
64. Valerie, February 8, 1889.
65. Sexau, Fürst und Arzt, p. 351.
66. Valerie, August 21, 1889.
67. Maria Freiin von Wallersee, Meine Vergangenheit (Berlin, 1913), pp. 234ff.
68. AA, Österreich 86, secret, March 6, 1889.
69. Corti Papers, Valerie, February 18, 1889.
70. Scharding, p. 301, June 23, 1890.
71. Hübner, February 3, 1889.
72. Wiener Zeitung, February 6, 1889.
73. Bourgoing, p. 133, from Vienna, February 5, 1889.
74. Valerie, February 10, 1889.
75. Bertha von Suttner, Lebenserinnerungen (Berlin, 1979), p. 376.
76. Valerie, May 24, 1889.
77. Ibid., June 17, 1890.
78. Ibid., December 8, 1889.
79. Ibid., February 15, 1889.
80. Amélie, July 30, 1890.
81. Ibid., December 4, 1890.
82. Valerie, February 24, 1889.
83. Scharding, p. 301, February 24, 1889.
84. Amélie, December 4, 1889.
85. Valerie, October 25, 1889.
86. Ibid., February 1, 1890.
87. Ibid., February 4, 1890.
88. Ibid., February 21, 1890.
89. Ibid., May 19, 1890.
90. Ibid., April 30, 1889.
91. Ibid., May 24, 1889.
92. Ibid., December 9, 1889.
93. Amélie, February 4, 1891.
94. AA, Österreich 86, January 28, 1890.
95. Valerie, July 23, 1890.
96. Ibid., May 28, 1890.
97. Ibid., July 31, 1890.
98. Valerie, January 26, 1891.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE ODYSSEY
The marriage of her favorite daughter marked the beginning of a period for which Elisabeth had been preparing for a long time. “Once I no longer have any responsibilities to my Valerie, and once she is taken care of and is a happy wife with a great many children, which is what my kedvesem [Hungarian for “darling”] always wanted, then I am free and my ‘seagull flight’ can begin.” And again, “I shall travel the whole world over, Ahasuerus shall be a stay-at-home compared to me. I want to cross the seven seas on a ship, a female ‘Flying Dutchman,’ until I drown and am forgotten.”1
Her only son was dead. Her only friend in the outside world, Andrássy, was dead. The Emperor was happy in his friendship with Katharina Schratt, her daughter Valerie was happy in her home, enriched by an increasing number of children. Empress Elisabeth was in her fifties. Her beauty was a thing of the past. “As soon as I feel myself aging, I shall retire from the world altogether. There is nothing more ‘horrendous’ than gradually becoming mummified and unwilling to say farewell to youth. To go about as a rouged larva—dreadful! Perhaps later, I shall always wear a veil, and even those closest to me will no longer see my face.”2
Elisabeth made good on her prediction. Never again did she allow herself to be portrayed—either by painters or photographers. Never again did she go out without fan or umbrella, behind which to hide her wrinkled, weather-beaten, emaciated face. The black fan and the white umbrella became, as Elisabeth’s Greek reader Christomanos wrote, “the loyal companions of her outward existence”; they could even be said to be “almost constituent parts of her physical appearance.” “In her hands, they are not what they mean to other women, but only emblems, weapons and shields in the service of her true self…. She wishes to use them only to ward off the external life of human beings, not to let it have any validity for herself, not to bow to the ‘herd laws of evolved animals’; she is eager to preserve her inner silence unprofaned; she is not willing to leave the locked gardens of grief she carries within herself.”3
Elisabeth left Austria as often and for as long as she could, and her journeys became ever more purposeless. The Emperor had always dared to voice only the most circumspect objections to her long, repeated absences: “If you think that it is necessary for your health, I shall keep silent, although this year we have not spent more than a few days together since spring,” he wrote in October 1887.4 During the 1890s the Empress spent at most a few weeks out of every year in Vienna, and even these she passed not in social activity or at public functions, but in total isolation in the Hermes Villa in Lainz.
It had been years since Elisabeth had tried to take a hand in political matters. Nor did she leave the slightest doubt that she no longer wished to be bothered with these affairs. Archduchess Valerie complained that Elisabeth’s “general way of life can be brought into harmony less and less with that of other people…. When will the time finally come when Mama will realize that she should live differently in order to give God an accounting of her talents?”5
Franz Joseph’s servants gained the impression that Elisabeth was deliberately offending her husband. Eugen Ketterl, the valet de chambre, for example, recorded the situation as he saw it.
In Gödöllö, the Emperor was only rarely allowed to see his wife, even though they were living under the same roof. If Franz Joseph wished to visit her of a morning and went to her apartments without having made an appointment, the spirits on duty explained to His Majesty that the Empress was still sleeping! Sometimes the sovereign lady was already in the mountains, from where she returned in the evening with her unhappy lady-in-waiting, and now, exhausted, she certainly would not receive the Emperor. So it could happen that the Emperor might try to see her in vain for ten days running. How embarrassing that was in front of the staff, anyone can imagine; I often felt endless pity for my sovereign lord.6
By this time, many people viewed Franz Joseph’s relationship with Katharina Schratt with approval, gladly granting the old, ever more resigned gentleman the cozy hours spent with his friend.
On her travels, too, the Empress’s behavior became increasingly odd. Even Countess Marie Festetics expressed her complaints in a letter from Corfu to Ida Ferenczy, who had remained behind (and this was in November 1888—that is, before the great emotional shock of the tragedy of Mayerling). “It bothers me, dear Ida, what I see and hear here. Her Majesty is always nice when we are together, and she speaks as she always did. But she is not the same—a shadow darkens her soul. I can use no other expression; in speaking of a person who suppresses or denies all handsome and noble feelings out of convenience or for amusement, one can only say that it is bitterness or cynicism! Believe me, my heart weeps bloody tears!” And then Marie Festetics cited a few examples of Elisabeth’s behavior.
And yet she does things that make not only your
heart but also your understanding stop. Yesterday morning the weather was bad, nevertheless she went out in the sailboat. At nine it began to pour, and the terrible rainstorm, along with thunder, lasted until three in the afternoon. All this time she sailed around us, sat on the deck—held the umbrella over her head and was soaked to the skin. Then she went ashore somewhere, ordered her car to come for her, and decided to spend the night in some strange villa. You can imagine how far we have come—fortunately, the physician goes everywhere with her. But even more outrageous things happen.7
This habit of simply going to strange houses—without saying a word or explaining what she had in mind—became a mania during the 1890s. Even the Emperor knew about this oddity of his wife’s; in 1894, after an incident in Nice, when an old woman chased away the stranger who seemed to want to enter her house, he wrote to Elisabeth, “I am glad that your Nice indigestion has passed so quickly and that you did not also get a beating from the old witch, but sooner or later that is exactly what will happen, for one does not simply push one’s way uninvited into people’s houses.”8
Uninvited and unannounced, she also turned up at various European courts, in order to fulfill her official obligations in a very strange and extremely uncourtlike manner. In 1891, for example, she drove directly from the railroad station to the royal palace in Athens and (in Greek) asked the first servant she encountered whether Their Majesties were at home. She was in traveling costume, and her only companion was her daughter. The servant, who did not recognize them, declared that if they wished an audience, they would have to call on the chamberlain. At that point Elisabeth revealed her identity. Valerie: “But it was true that they [King George I and his wife] really were not at home, and so we drove to the Crown Prince’s palace, in order to burst in on his family in the same way.” They were received by poor Crown Princess Sophie, who was unfamiliar with the local language and could not follow Elisabeth’s Greek conversation.9 In order to teach her a lesson, Elisabeth did not switch to German but continued to speak in modern Greek.