Other crowned heads had to endure similar raids, among them the King of the Netherlands and Empress Friedrich. The latter, the mother of Wilhelm II, had retired to a castle near Bad Homburg. Elisabeth had a great liking for the very intelligent but embittered widow of the “Ninety-nine Day Emperor,” Friedrich III, and wished to honor her with a visit—on a hot summer’s day, naturally unannounced, and unaccompanied by a lady-in-waiting. The sentry, of course, stopped the strange woman who claimed to be the Empress of Austria. Empress Friedrich was roused with the alarming news that Empress Elisabeth was being held in the guardroom. The incident seemed to amuse Elisabeth, for she did not appear at all angry when the distraught chamberlain released her; she took the episode as an occasion for laughter.10
On the other hand, she paid her respects very formally to a faded glory of yesteryear, the former Empress Eugénie of France. The widowed Eugénie lived in retirement at Cap Martin on the Riviera. Elisabeth ordered her companions to show the ex-Empress all the respect formerly due her. Archduchess Valerie was impressed, praising Eugénie’s “charm, although there are hardly any traces left of her former beauty. Her demeanor extremely plain. One would hardly recognize her eventful past, she makes so little show of pain or toppled greatness.”11
The two ladies shared drives and excursions in the countryside surrounding Cap Martin. Eugénie on Elisabeth: “It was as if one were going driving with a ghost, for her spirit seems to dwell in another world. She was rarely aware of what was happening around her, nor did she take notice when she was greeted by people who recognized her. When she did, she answered the greeting with a singular toss of the head instead of the customary bow.”12
On her travels, the Empress gave ample demonstration of her utter contempt for any kind of etiquette. Marie Festetics to Ida Ferenczy from Genoa: “Entre nous, yesterday Her Majesty received the simple commandant of the German training ship, although before this, she has turned away admirals, high dignitaries (military, civilian, and clerical) from Spain, France, and Italy. This disturbs me, since I am afraid of the newspapers.”13
The Austrian diplomats were unsuccessful in their proposals that the Empress take part in official functions. “The Empress, however, was gracious enough to allow me to offer her an introduction to Arab snake charmers, conjurors, and soothsayers.” So wrote the Austrian chargé d’affaires in Cairo to the foreign minister in 1891. He added that Elisabeth’s “average march capacity per day is ca. 8 hours”14—and this in Egypt!
Her attempt, in 1891, to attend a ball one more time was a failure. Archduchess Valerie: “Many ladies are said to have sobbed, and in spite of diamonds and bright feathers, the whole resembled a funeral more than it did a carnival. Mama herself was in deepest mourning crepe.”15
In 1893, Elisabeth made a final appearance at the “ball at court.” The geologist Eduard Suess described the party.
All the old imperial splendor. Every candelabrum seemed to want to tell its experiences. Close to the door to the inner salon, in his red hussar’s uniform, stands the master of ceremonies, Count Hunyady, with the long white staff, and … a Milky Way of youthful beauties streamed past him, the swarm of the whole new female generation of the nobility, who are eager to honor their Empress, know everything, and are without any adornment beyond their own charms. In the middle of the salon, however, two black figures, the perpetually mourning Empress and her chatelaine, and it was as if all the glittering diamonds with which the mothers standing on the sidelines adorned themselves were extinguished by this deep, dull sorrow, and as if each of the bowing young creatures were told how much magnificence and how much grief can be combined in one life.16
The presence of the Empress at court balls was crucial for social reasons. Before being introduced to society, the young girls of the aristocracy had to be introduced to the Empress. That was the tradition of the court of Vienna. By her refusal to participate in social occasions, the Empress brought a good deal of disorder into the strictly regulated structure of Viennese society.
The question of which archduchess was to represent the Empress on ceremonial occasions soon set quarrels and jealousies in motion. Rudolf’s widow, Stephanie, was very unpopular. Franz Joseph’s younger brother Karl Ludwig claimed that his wife, the beautiful Archduchess Maria Theresia, was the legitimate first (deputy) lady of the court.
Elisabeth’s position at court was thus given away in her lifetime. The court no longer counted on her—quite correctly, since she left no doubt that she despised such obligations.
Those familiar with life at the court could not fail to suspect that Rudolf’s death was not the true reason for Elisabeth’s absences from Vienna. It served merely as the pretext, a justification to the world.
Elisabeth’s aimless wanderings through Europe, in her own parlor car or on the imperial yachts Greif and Miramar, were a genuine martyrdom for her ladies-in-waiting, most especially Countess Festetics, whose health was no longer the best. Marie Festetics’s complaints were frequently voiced in letters. “Here I sit on the rolling ship in the alien world—alone. This too shall pass, but it is hard to watch with a cheerful countenance. I am homesick.”17 Her letters make much mention of bad weather—“Thunder, storm, and rain as if it were Judgment Day”—and of endless inspection tours.
The Empress paid no attention at all to the weather. She loved the forces of nature and had no understanding for the sensitivities of her companions. There were almost grotesque scenes; once the traveling party had to go aboard the Miramar at Corfu during a “powerful northeaster.” “In their mortal terror,” as Alexander von Warsberg reported, two of the chamber-women fled into a corner. Elisabeth, unaffected by storm and rough seas, was intent on forcing the two of them, in this unsettling situation, “to admire the magnificent sunset, the colors on the mountains behind Patras, until the poor creatures broke out in wretched cries, saying that they could see nothing at all but the terrible waves.”18
Countess Festetics, who was always seasick, found it particularly difficult to walk up and down alongside her mistress on the ship, in any weather, because Elisabeth could not sit still. After one such ocean voyage in the Aegean in November, Marie Festetics stated, “To roam for two weeks on the open sea, at this time of year, is no pleasure.”19
The same Elisabeth who, in Vienna, sighed at every cool breeze, proved, on her travels, to be totally indifferent to bad weather. Countess Festetics: “Her Majesty left Vienna because she cannot endure the cold, and we are spending the very worst six weeks in the coldest places, she goes out even in weather so bad that the wind twice turned her umbrella inside out and blew her hat off her head.”20
During stormy seas, she even had herself tied to a chair on deck. “I do this like Odysseus, because the waves tempt me,” she explained to Christomanos.21
Sometimes Elisabeth spared her ladies-in-waiting when she went on her excursions in storm and rain and took along whoever happened to be her Greek reader at the time. Konstantin Christomanos—the short, hunchbacked philosophy student—once walked with her in the park at Schönbrunn in December during a wet snowstorm. They were forced to keep jumping over large puddles of water. “Like frogs, we go hunting in the pools,” said the Empress. “We are like two damned souls wandering through the underworld. For many people, this would be hell…. I like this sort of weather most of all. For it is not for other people. I am allowed to enjoy it all by myself. Actually, it exists only for me, like those plays poor King Ludwig had performed for himself alone. Except that out here, it is even more splendid. It could even be a wilder storm, then one feels so close to all things, as in conversation.”22
Elisabeth’s hectic restlessness also cast its shadows on the construction of the Achilleion on Corfu. Countess Festetics complained, “Her Majesty grows more willful and more self-indulgent by the day and is ever more demanding—she is trying to give herself heaven on earth…. Her Majesty tells herself that for money one can have even a garden like a castle’s, she is in despair because the trees are
still not green. In her mind’s eye, she sees the garden of Miramar, which was truly magnificent this year, and that is the cause of her discontent.”23
But even her Greek property did not inspire Elisabeth to settle down. Hardly had the castle been completed than she set out again, not unlike the way she had behaved about the Hermes Villa, which she no longer especially liked. Much as she longed for a home, serenity in it escaped her.
Abruptly she persuaded herself that she needed money for Valerie and that she therefore had to sell the Achilleion. “I shall even sell my private silver service engraved with my dolphin; perhaps some American will take it. I have an agent in America who advised me to do this,” she explained to the astonished Christomanos.24
The Emperor could not accept Elisabeth’s proposal to use the monies realized from a sale for Valerie.
Valerie and what will probably be her numerous children will not starve even without the profit from your house, and it will surely seem very strange and give rise to unpleasant comment if you try to get rid of the entire property immediately after having built the villa with so much effort, so much care, and at such great expense, have had so many things brought there, after you most recently bought additional property adjoining it. Do not forget how accommodating the Greek government has been in serving you, how everyone on every side cooperated to smooth the path for you and give you pleasure, and now it was all in vain
A commensurate price, he added, could not be expected in any case, since the house already needed repairs, “and yet it will cause quite a scandal.” Elisabeth should really give the matter some more thought.
“For me,” Franz Joseph’s letter continued, “your plan also has its sad side. I had quietly hoped that, after you built Gasturi with so much joy, so much eagerness, that you would pass in your new creation at least the greater part of the time you unfortunately spend in the south. Now this, too, is to be stopped, and you will travel even more and roam the world.” He was looking forward to a reunion “with infinite impatience.”25
But in spite of these serious objections, once again, what Elisabeth wanted was what Elisabeth got; as soon as the Achilleion had been fully furnished, it was emptied out again. The expensive copies of antique furniture were shipped to Vienna and stored in the various castles and warehouses because the Empress was no longer interested in them. No buyer was found.
One other time the Empress had a plan to build herself a house—this time in San Remo—but she quickly abandoned it. From this time on, she preferred hotels. But here, too, her excessive demands created perpetual problems. All too often she would arrive unannounced at the height of the season, bringing a sizable entourage, demanding a great many rooms—at times the entire hotel—with a private entrance and hundreds of complicated security precautions to protect herself from curiosity seekers. Soon, therefore, her arrival became a matter of dread. “Her Majesty grows more demanding by the year, and with the best will in the world, it is not possible to satisfy her; the people are so astonished at us that I blush,” Marie Festetics wrote from Interlaken to Ida Ferenczy in Hungary in 1892.26
Ida Ferenczy went along on none of the trips because of her precarious health. By the early 1890s, Countess Festetics had also become ill and tired. “Where we shall be in 2–3 days, we do not know. I understand that man seeks warmth, but that one spends three months on board ship in the winter probably requires a special gusto. Where we are headed, not even Her Majesty really knows.”27 After more than twenty years of hard work as a lady-in-waiting to the Empress, Marie Festetics was finally replaced by the much younger and more athletic Countess Irma Sztaray, also a Hungarian. Accompanied by Irma, the Empress spent her final years wandering through Europe and around the Mediterranean. In 1890, for example, she traveled to Bad Ischl, Feldafing, Paris, Lisbon, Algiers, Florence, and Corfu. Often she changed her destination on short notice, causing considerable confusion. Her mail was sent to her in care of general delivery wherever her ship was scheduled to dock (according to information in Vienna, which was frequently incorrect). The name to which letters were directed was almost always a pseudonym. For example, in October 1890, the imperial adjutant general, Count Eduard Paar, sent Emperor Franz Joseph’s letters to a “Mrs. Elizabetha Nicholson—Chazalie” (Chazalie being the name of the ship Elisabeth was using on this trip) to general delivery in “Arcachon, La Coruña, Oporto, Oran, Algiers, Toulon, Gibraltar, San Remo, Marseilles, Monaco, Cannes, Mentone, and Livorno … and finally a small chest … to Gibraltar.” Elisabeth’s chief chamberlain, Baron Nopcsa, was required to find out from the consulates in question “whether mail had been left at one of these places and to send it back.”28
The Empress’s retinue came to see a great deal of the world in this way. Thus, one of the Greek readers, M. C. Marinaky, was in Elisabeth’s service for ten months in 1895–1896; this time was spent in the Hermes Villa outside Vienna (May and June), the Hungarian spa of Bartfeld (July), Bad Ischl (August), Aix-les-Bains and Territet on Lake Geneva (September), Gödöllö (October), Vienna (November), Cap Martin (December to February), and Cannes, Naples, Sorrento, and Corfu (March).
The itineraries for other years were not very different. Some of her destinations were chosen on a sudden whim and were irreconcilable with Austrian politics. For example, the German ambassador, reporting on Elisabeth’s trip to Florence, wrote that “Emperor Franz Joseph did not wish his wife to set foot anywhere on Italian soil. Nor was this place part of her itinerary, but the sovereign lady’s decisions are not always known ahead of time.”29
Two years later, after an audience with Emperor Franz Joseph, the German ambassador informed Berlin, “But it is clear from all his statements how little he himself knows about the plans of Her Majesty his wife, and he has little influence on her travel decisions…. I am not stating anything new if I most humbly remark that these long absences from home on the part of the Empress are not gratifying to the Emperor, and that they are seen with displeasure in the country and unfortunately are judged harshly.”30
And time and again, Elisabeth traveled to Munich, the site of her childhood. Countess Sztaray reported, “Walking slowly, we traversed the city; we did not wish to see anything new, anything surprising; this visit was entirely dedicated to the past, to memories. Now we stopped before an old-fashioned palace, then again before an old building, at a stand of trees whose branches had spread wide since then, at a bed of flowers that had been blooming even then. The Empress … had something to tell about each one, something lovely from the good old days.” She never left Munich without a visit to the Hofbräuhaus—incognito of course, and behaving “like the best of the bourgeois,” as she said. Each time she ordered a small pitcher of beer for herself and her lady-in-waiting.31
On all these travels, Elisabeth refused police protection. But in view of the growing danger of anarchists, some governments insisted on having her followed by police agents—even against her express wishes. One of these tormented agents, Anton Hammer from Karlsbad, recounted, “Empress Elisabeth made a tremendous lot of work for us. No one was allowed to look at her. In one hand she held an umbrella, in the other her fan. To this were added her sudden walks, once at three o’clock at night, then again in the mornings she would go to the woods. One had to be on the alert at all times. And with all this, I had been given strict orders to watch the Empress’s every step in such a way that she would not notice.” Often enough, when Elisabeth became aware of one of these agents, she fled across fences or along untrodden paths to shake off her watchers. These escapades were the cause of great unpleasantness for the agents, because they had failed to comply with their orders to accompany the Empress. Hammer: “We had to stalk after the Empress for five hours. Always at a distance of about two hundred meters, using trees or rocks to hide behind.”32 The curiosity to catch a glimpse of what had been the most beautiful woman in the world was great everywhere. Many observers noted the great disparity between legend and reality. One of these was Prince Alfons Clary-Aldringen, who saw
the Empress in Territet when he was a small boy in 1896–1897. He and his sister were in the hills behind the hotel where both the Clary family and the Empress were staying. When they saw the black, slender figure of the Empress, the children blocked her path, “and lo and behold, because no adult was nearby, this time the Empress did not open her fan! My sister curtseyed, and I made my best bow; she smiled at us in a friendly way—but I was stunned, for I saw a face full of wrinkles, looking as old as the hills.”
When the children spoke to their grandmother of the encounter, she solemnly told them, “Children, do not forget this day, when you saw the most beautiful woman in the world!” Alfons Clary: “In response to my smart-aleck answer, ‘But, Grandmama, her face is all wrinkled!’ I received a hefty slap.”33
Even today we do not know what Elisabeth’s face looked like in age—there are no pictures. In the memories of her contemporaries as well as for posterity, she remains the woman the pictures show: beautiful and young. This legend, which she herself encouraged, cast a shadow over her last years. For now she had one more reason to fear other people: They might see her real face.
Only very, very few still knew the Empress during her final years. To accidental observers, encounters with her during this time were deeply disappointing. For example, the actress Rosa Albach-Retty saw the Empress and her lady-in-waiting, Countess Sztaray, in 1898 in a small country inn in Bad Ischl. Since Elisabeth’s true appearance was nowhere pictured, Retty did not recognize the ladies at once. One was “clearly in mourning, for with her black, high-necked dress she wore black laced boots and a black hat, its thick veil turned back over a broad brim.” It was the Empress. The other lady, younger and in light clothing, Countess Sztaray, briefly went into the inn, leaving Elisabeth alone at the table. Rosa Albach-Retty: “For seconds Elisabeth stared downward, then with her left hand she took out her dentures, held them sideways over the edge of the table, and rinsed them off by pouring a glass of water over them. Then she put them back in her mouth. All this was done with such graceful nonchalance, but most particularly at such lightning speed, that at first I could not believe my eyes.”34
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