*
Of all the gossip about Elisabeth’s restlessness, which seems pathological, only one example need be cited here, recorded by Bertha von Suttner. Countess Ernestine Crenneville, she stated, had told her, “I still remember our sitting together one day after a small dinner at the Empress’s, a very few of us. Archduchess Valerie, the Duke of Cumberland, and I. A few ladies-in-waiting to one side. The Empress was very silent and sad. Suddenly she calls out, ‘Oh, out! Out into the country, far away….’ Archduchess Valerie jumps to her feet: ‘For heaven’s sake, Mama….’ The Duke of Cumberland interrupts in an attempt to mollify. ‘You are right, Your Majesty!’ and quietly to the daughter, ‘But never leave her alone, never alone!’”35
As early as three months after Rudolf’s death, the news made its way through the European press that the Austrian Empress had succumbed to madness. In a surprisingly well-informed article, the Berlin Tageblatt described the course of this disease honorably (and probably correctly, in contrast to the other reports, which simply indicated insanity) as an “extreme nervous disorder.”
For those familiar with conditions at the Austrian court, there is nothing surprising in this news. The extravagances of the unhappy Empress, her ever more strongly expressed reluctance to appear in public, her shy nature, which so resembles that of the unhappy Ludwig, King of Bavaria, has long since given rise to the fear of a catastrophic occurrence sooner or later. It would, accordingly, be an error if one were to present the dreadful end of Crown Prince Rudolf as the cause of the disorder; it has long existed and has slowly and steadily been spreading.36
Of course, these reports of the Empress’s illness, circulated by all the major European papers, were countered with energetic denials in the Austrian press: The Empress was merely suffering from painful neuralgia. The neurologist Professor Richard Krafft-Ebing (the same doctor who had treated and committed Elisabeth’s sister Sophie Alençon) had not—as the Austrian papers emphasized—been called.37
Over and over, during the 1890s, the international press brought up the subject of Elisabeth’s supposed insanity. In 1893, the Milan newspaper Il Secolo wrote, “Empress and Queen Elisabeth is suffering from the onset of insanity. Every night, she is plagued by hallucinations. Her obsession is touching. She believes that Crown Prince Rudolf is still a child and is with her. To calm her, it was necessary to have a wax doll made, and this she incessantly covers with kisses and tears.”38
These lurid reports, however, were highly exaggerated. Quite the contrary: At the very time when these stories appeared and when Emperor Franz Joseph was visiting his allegedly mad wife in Territet, Elisabeth’s frame of mind was good. Writing about this meeting between the Emperor and the Empress, Marie Festetics noted, “Her Majesty is in particularly good humor, and he too glows with happiness. Her Majesty has really been looking forward to his visit and [I] can say only that she has the master entirely in her pocket.”39
The Emperor and Empress relaxed with long walks and shopping, constantly besieged by journalists. The Swiss paper Der Bund gave a detailed list of the purchases they made in Territet. “The Emperor ordered a considerable quantity of Villeneuve wine, which he particularly enjoys, and 10,000 Grandson and Vevey cigars; the Empress put in an order for cookies from Viviser and Villeneuve.”40
Elisabeth’s letters to Bavaria from this period also attest to an untroubled frame of mind. “I am glad that the Emperor can take a little vacation at last, and nowhere could he enjoy it more than in a republic. He is in good humor, enjoys his freedom, the beautiful surroundings, and the excellent cuisine.”41 Valerie, for her part, found her father’s stay “in a republic” by no means worth the risk. After Franz Joseph’s departure, she noted in her diary, “It was not without worry that we saw him set out without any entourage or almost any security measures to the country notorious as the residence of nihilists and socialists.”42
But the continuing news reports about the Empress’s supposed madness were not pure speculation. For on her travels she behaved so oddly, her shyness had taken on such proportions, that innocent observers who encountered her on her constant escape routes or who tried to follow her (which invariably prompted Elisabeth to extremely odd responses) could easily think they were dealing with a lunatic. Countess Festetics: “With us, everything is extraordinary. Her Majesty is simple, it is only that she begins from the back what others begin from the front, begins from the left what others begin from the right. It is from this that the difficulties arise.”43
Her Bavarian family also noted Elisabeth’s idiosyncrasies, but they rejected the rumors of mental illness. Marie von Redwitz, one of the Bavarian ladies-in-waiting, summed up the family’s opinion when she wrote that Elisabeth “has always been strange and has followed only her whims and wishes, and now shyness and melancholia have been added. Who among gifted people who enjoy unlimited freedom is entirely normal? The Empress is, as we all are, the product of conditions.”44
When Elisabeth spoke, it was, according to Valerie, about “only the saddest things.” She complained of her unhappy fate and was so inconsolable that religious Valerie feared for her eternal salvation and prayed earnestly for her mother’s “conversion.”45 When Valerie’s deepest wish came true and she became pregnant, the Empress expressed bitterness. Valerie: “She sighed about my condition, it was difficult for her to feel with me the happiness which, strangely, in spite of her motherlove for me, she cannot understand at all.—For the rest, I found Mama in a disconsolate frame of mind, more closed off and embittered than ever…. She told me … that the birth of every new human being seemed to her a misfortune, since one can fulfill one’s destiny only in suffering.” At Valerie’s suggestion that she consult a doctor, Elisabeth replied only, “Oh, doctors and priests are such donkeys”—a statement that deeply offended her devout daughter.46
Even the Emperor repeatedly complained. For example, he spoke to his chief of the general staff, Baron Beck, about the Empress’s poor health, “her overstressed nerves, her increasing restlessness, her extravagances, her very sick heart.” But Franz Joseph’s complaints always contained “tones of deep concern.”47
During these final years, Elisabeth’s chief attention was given to her waning health. She still put herself through her starvation diets. She still complained of every little weight gain. Dr. Viktor Eisenmenger examined the Empress in Territet during the 1890s. “In the otherwise healthy woman I found fairly pronounced swelling, especially in the ankles. A condition physicians saw rarely in those days and which did not become regrettably notorious until the war. Edema of hunger!” Elisabeth totally rejected all suggestions pertaining to diet.48
Marie Henike, one of the Empress’s servants, listed the tortures Elisabeth voluntarily underwent, such as “steam baths followed by 7-degree [Celsius = 45 degrees Fahrenheit] full baths, it would put many people into a faint, bring on death. Her Majesty also admits to having had a ringing in her ears after this.” Then there were “sweat cures—every evening dressed very warmly quickly walking up the mountain several times…. This was also to prevent getting fat—Her Majesty always looked so exhausted!!” Elisabeth’s weight was given as 93.2 pounds—that is, 46.6 kilos (= 102.7 U.S. pounds): “In Cap Martin two years ago after decongestion of her leg, 87 [pounds = 95 U.S. pounds]!!” It is well to remember her height—172 centimeters (= 5 ft., 7.7 in.).49
The Emperor, too, suffered from Elisabeth’s constant complaints about her weight, and repeatedly he expressed his discontent to Katharina Schratt (who, though she also constantly dieted along the same lines as Elisabeth, never managed to reduce her chubby figure). In 1894, for example, he mentioned that the Empress was “worried that she would grow too heavy again, because, since she has been drinking Karlsbad water and lives only on black coffee, cold meat, and eggs, she has gained quite a bit of weight. But that is pure craziness!”50 His “sweet, beloved soul”—as he still addressed his wife in his letters—implored the Emperor not to communicate her dieting whims to Katharina. Around
1897, Elisabeth hatched a plan “to have installed two bathing cubicles in the Hermes Villa, one for you and one for our friend, in which you are to be roasted or burned away. It would be so terrible if, after the sad experiences you had with steam baths, you were to undertake another, similar cure and drag your friend, who goes along with every medical mischief, down with you into ruin!”51 And in 1897, before an encounter with Elisabeth, Franz Joseph wrote Frau Schratt, to be on the safe side, “Should you be frightened at her quite bad appearance, I beg you not to let it show, nor to speak very much with the Empress about health, but if that is unavoidable, to cheer her up, but especially not recommend to her any new cure and new system. You will find the Empress very dull, very sickly, and in an especially depressed mood. You can imagine how worried I am.”52
Though she ate very little now, Elisabeth was extremely fussy about what she did eat. Her daily quota of milk presented a special problem. Even in Vienna, it was difficult to obtain good milk. The Empress therefore repeatedly sent cows to Vienna for the Emperor from her travels. In April 1896, for example, two cows arrived in Vienna at the same time, one from Brittany and the other from Corfu—a further indication as well of Elisabeth’s hectic travel schedule.53 The Empress kept her own dairies, both in Schönbrunn and in the deer park at Lainz, where her favorite cows were kept, and when she traveled—at least when she traveled by ship—she usually took along two milk cows and a goat, to guarantee a steady supply of fresh, healthy milk. Caring for these animals—hardly seasoned sailors—was an additional burden on Elisabeth’s entourage. The Empress’s health depended on the animals’ well-being, since she nourished herself almost entirely on milk and eggs.
It must be remembered that the Empress’s principal destinations, the Greek islands and southern Italy, were not yet organized for tourism, and there were none of the hotels that would have catered to it; and the Empress always preferred the most out-of-the-way places. Stores of food therefore had to be brought along from Vienna. And though the entourage had long since grown much smaller than it was at the time of the English hunts, it still amounted to at least twenty people, not counting the ship’s crew. All of them had to be provided for. Only in the last two years of her life did the Empress restrict herself to railway travel and to hotels in such regions as Switzerland and the Riviera, which were open to tourism.
*
Only once during these final years of her life did the Empress appear in public in her official role—at Hungary’s Millennial Celebration of 1896. Hardly anyone recognized her, she had changed so much: “a black, female head, a new, an infinitely sorrowing face, with a smile that seemed no more than a shallow reflex. Her greeting is cordial but mechanical…. This face holds itself completely aloof, as it were,” the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Hirlap reported.54 In her usual way, on this occasion, too, Elisabeth kept her face hidden behind a black fan.
During the 1897 Badeni crisis, ugly nationalist struggles shook the monarchy; the Empress took no stand. At the beginning of the Jubilee Year of 1898, the fiftieth anniversary of Franz Joseph’s reign, martial law had to be declared in Prague because the nationalist struggles had grown to uncontrollable proportions; the Empress remained disinterested. Social hardship ravaged the great cities as well as the villages of the monarchy; the Empress took no notice. Her daughter Valerie looked on her mother’s apathy with concern. “How differently Mama would view life’s joys and sorrows if only once she could realize the value of time and action.”55
The Empress, now sixty years old, spent the winter of 1897–1898—her last one on earth—on the French Riviera, steeped in illness and melancholy. Once again, Franz Joseph visited his wife for two weeks, but later he told the German ambassador that, because of his worry about the Empress’s health, “the whole stay in Cap Martin had been spoiled…. Further, intercourse with the sovereign lady seems to be more than usually disturbed because of her great nervousness.”56 In February 1898, Elisabeth wrote her husband “that she is alive and feels as if she were 80 years old.”57
Archduchess Valerie did not see her mother again until May 1898, when they met in Bad Kissingen. “Mama looks terribly ill. But everyone here says she is better…. According to everything I am told here, Mama’s winter was even worse than we knew … all the grief of this poor, desolate life, now aggravated by age and sickliness, and still without that comforting light which alone can help to overcome all the misery.” Valerie was, of course, once again referring to the religious faith Elisabeth continued to lack.58
Elisabeth’s steps, once almost floating, had grown slow and heavy. She could no longer take her long walks. She was restricted mostly to rounds through such spas as Bad Kissingen, Bad Gastein, Karlsbad, and Bad Nauheim, and to shopping expeditions to purchase mainly toys for her numerous grandchildren.
In the summer of 1898, the Emperor and Empress met for two weeks in Bad Ischl, where Archduchess Valerie joined them. Elisabeth was “in low spirits, as always,” and Valerie criticized “the melancholic effect of court life, this exclusion from all natural situations, which one must become accustomed to all over again even if one has grown up in it oneself. What must Papa’s usual life be like for him to find life here comfortable and enjoyable?”59
After Elisabeth’s departure for Bad Nauheim, Valerie remained her father’s guest in Bad Ischl for a few more weeks and felt strong pangs of conscience. “It makes me so sad, and yet I am unable to change the fact that being with Papa places a constraint on me as if I were with a stranger.”60 She understood very well why overly sensitive Elisabeth could not endure being with her husband for long, though she laid the blame for all the family misery on Archduchess Sophie (who had been dead for twenty-six years). “This year more than ever I felt the fossilized court life to be oppressive … since it seeps suffocatingly between the most intimate family relationships, turning them from spontaneous pleasure only to indescribable constraint. If that is the result of Grandmama Sophie’s system, it may well prepare a bitter Purgatory for her … this awful court life, which artificially robbed Papa of the ability to enjoy simple, unforced relations.”61
The cure in Bad Nauheim did not improve Elisabeth’s outlook one whit. “I am in bad humor and sad, and the family can be glad that they are away from me. I have a sense that I will not rally again,” she wrote her daughter in late July.62
*
From Bad Nauheim she traveled to Switzerland. Valerie: “She felt drawn to Switzerland all summer long, she wanted to enjoy her beloved mountains, warmth and sunshine, and she did enjoy them, with a sense of improved health.”63 Elisabeth loved Lake Geneva: “It is altogether the color of the ocean, altogether like the ocean.” Of all Swiss cities, she had always preferred Geneva. “It is my favorite place to stay, because there I am quite lost among the cosmopolites: it confers an illusion of the true human condition,” she once told Christomanos, who diligently wrote down her every word.64
Elisabeth’s preference for Switzerland developed only during her last years. In the 1880s, she had still written quite chilly lines referring to Switzerland’s generous right of asylum for anarchists. In the final years of her life, however, even the danger of anarchists was unable to frighten her: She longed for death. Danger began to attract the Empress, who was weary of life. In spite of urgent recommendations from the Swiss police, she still refused the protection of security agents.65
Elisabeth was staying, as she had several times before, in Territet, outside Montreux, where she intended to take a four-weeks’ cure. From here, she and Countess Sztaray set out on September 9, 1898, for an excursion to Pregny. They were going to visit Baroness Julie Rothschild the wife of Adolphe Rothschild from Paris and the sister of the Vienna Rothschilds Nathaniel and Albert. (There could, of course, be no real friendship with Julie Rothschild. Elisabeth’s sister, ex-Queen Marie of Naples, defrayed her high cost of living with Rothschild funds, in return honoring the socially ambitious family with her royal company. Elisabeth’s visit in Pregny, the first in decades, was a s
ervice done for her sister.) The three ladies had lunch, walked around the splendid old park, visited the orchid nursery, and engaged in very animated conversation in French. As Countess Sztaray confirmed, Elisabeth felt well during the visit.
Of course, even on this occasion the Empress preserved her incognito. (She was traveling under the name of Countess von Hohenembs.) The fact that at the time of the largest groundswell of anti-Semitism, aroused by the Dreyfus trial, in Paris, the Empress and Queen of Austria-Hungary was calling on a member of the Rothschild family would surely have occasioned headlines.
After a three-hour visit, Elisabeth and her lady-in-waiting continued on to Geneva, where they planned to spend the night before returning to Montreux the following day. Here in Geneva, which she knew very well, the Empress visited her favorite pastry shop, bought toys for her grandchildren, and, as always, retired very early. In the hotel, too, she was registered as Countess von Hohenembs. But the hotel manager was aware, from her previous stays, of the prominence of the guest who graced his establishment.
The following morning, a Geneva newspaper carried a news item to the effect that Empress Elisabeth of Austria was staying at the Hotel Beau Rivage. It was never established who had informed the newspaper. This report sealed Elisabeth’s fate.
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