Twilight of Empire

by Greg King

  An increase in suicidal thoughts grew as hope faded. Rudolf’s fascination with death and avid interest in reports of the latest suicides was not only a reflection of an imperial Vienna consumed with such things: Unhappiness eventually drove him to ponder death as preferable to an unfulfilling life. This despair took dangerous form when Rudolf asked Mitzi Caspar to die with him that summer of 1888. When she laughingly dismissed his request, he asked members of his staff, and even threatened to kill Stephanie and then shoot himself. While these all seem to have been genuine declarations of intent, perhaps subconsciously Rudolf hoped that someone would intervene, assuring him that his life and future mattered.

  These threads unfortunately wove together in January 1889. Rudolf’s Hungarian misadventure was bad enough, an unmistakably traitorous act driven by political despair and personal failure, but it had no connection to his liaison with Mary Vetsera. That relationship, begun as nothing more than another temporary diversion, at first kept the crown prince occupied, but with the passing weeks it became an intricate web of intrigue, pushed ever further by Marie Larisch, Helene Vetsera, and by Mary herself.

  Kept on the social sidelines because of her illegitimacy and perpetually in debt from gambling, Larisch was already intimately tied to Mary’s family, not merely by friendship but through her affair with her uncle Heinrich Baltazzi, who fathered her third and fourth children. Ever on the lookout for possible financial rewards—and attendant chances at blackmail—Larisch may have suggested an affair to Helene Vetsera, letting it be known that she was amenable to using her position and influence to facilitate a liaison in exchange for financial consideration. Certainly someone, either Larisch or Helene Vetsera, pushed—and pushed hard—given that Mary and her mother went to London in 1887 and let it be known that while there, the young baroness would prove sympathetic to the crown prince’s amorous needs.

  Nothing apparently came of the visit to England, but the efforts were renewed in the spring of 1888. Despite her later claims of ignorance, Helene Vetsera not only knew of her daughter’s liaison with Rudolf but also helped engineer it. She’d made little attempt to disguise her ambitions, chasing after the imperial family and, more particularly, Rudolf, a decade earlier at Gödöllö. Her behavior stretched the bounds of propriety, but Helene seemed unconcerned. And now Mary became her tool for advancement, as Helene became submerged in her daughter’s romantic career. The mother assured men that her daughter was sympathetic, boldly invited them to her palace, and pushed Mary toward them as she left the room—unsubtle hints that few mistook. This wasn’t a search for potential husbands: Gentlemen didn’t marry young ladies who acted so outrageously and bore such terrible reputations. Helene’s calculated actions promoted Mary to various potential lovers in exchange for coveted invitations to social events, introductions to important aristocrats, rewards of money or, more ominously, perhaps blackmail to keep word of any indiscretions from spreading through Vienna.

  Mary was no innocent: A string of romantic conquests lay behind her when she first met Rudolf. Yet it is impossible to view her as calculating. She was only sixteen, a teenage girl, immature, erratic, and accustomed to maternal obedience. Without moral guidance, propelled by fantasy, and pushed by her ambitious mother, Mary easily gave in to the exciting new adventure of pursuing Rudolf. That she came to care deeply for him over time seems likely. Perhaps in her girlish imagination she believed that he was desperately in love with her; it was, after all, just the sort of forbidden and dangerous romance that filled the lurid French novels she regularly devoured, and she began to envision herself as the heroine in some epic royal love story.

  Rudolf was oblivious to the women manipulating his affair. All he saw was a pretty, willing young woman who evinced nothing short of hero worship where he was concerned. Mary temporarily cemented her hold by appealing to his vanity. Rudolf was accustomed to fawning adoration and breathless romanticism among his conquests: It was all part of the game, a fire that briefly burned bright before inevitably being extinguished. And he was practiced in the illusion of participating in the passing charade as long as he was entertained and amused. For him the affair became yet another well-acted, diverting, but ultimately ephemeral romance.

  The affair played itself out across the autumn of 1888, with meetings in the Prater, assignations at Eduard Palmer’s apartment, and Mary’s repeated visits to Rudolf at the Hofburg. Although history often portrays Rudolf as so desperately in love with Mary that he regarded death at her side as preferable to life without her, the truth is that by the end of 1888 the liaison had run its course. Evidence disputing the romantic myth is clear: There is no doubt that in the last months of his life Rudolf was slowly but surely pulling away from Mary. This wasn’t an unexpected development. “He loved many women in his time,” recalled Rudolf’s cousin Archduke Leopold of Tuscany, “but no one woman for long, and I am convinced in my own mind that he knew well enough that the infatuation he felt for poor Mary would very soon pall.” He would “pluck at every fair flower within his reach, and cast it aside as soon as he was done with it.”28

  On December 21, 1888, Bratfisch collected Mary and took her to see Rudolf at the Hofburg. This was the last time the lovers met that year. It also seems to have marked the beginning of Rudolf’s attempts to distance himself from Mary, attempts ironically spurred on by her own mother. Increasingly Mary’s flagrant and erratic behavior unnerved Helene Vetsera. There was too much gossip about her daughter in Vienna now: Everyone, it seemed, knew of her relationship with Rudolf—that might have been acceptable had Mary’s immaturity not driven her to cause constant public scenes, especially when the crown princess was present. Helene wasn’t stupid: A liaison with the crown prince could be mined for potential financial and social rewards, but she knew it would one day end. When that time came, she pinned her hopes on the duke of Braganza; she erroneously believed that, as a widower, he might be amenable to a young lady of damaged reputation.

  But Mary’s behavior threatened these plans. She’d turned a discreet liaison with the crown prince into a delicious society scandal. If Helene hoped to salvage anything of the future, Mary had to be reined in. Given her romantic flights of fancy and conviction that Rudolf was desperately in love with her, Mary wouldn’t willingly end the relationship, and so her mother tried to force the issue and contain the damage. It is said that she actually wrote to Rudolf in December 1888—surely an odd letter, coming from a woman he had apparently slept with a decade earlier, and whose daughter now shared his bed—asking him to put an end to the affair.29

  This alleged request coincided with Rudolf’s waning interest in the affair. By December, according to the anonymously published Last Days of Archduke Rudolf, the crown prince’s “attachment to Mademoiselle Vetsera, renewed and broken again by intervals of absence or, indeed, of disagreements—which were not infrequent—was undergoing its inevitable denouement.”30 In the wake of Mayerling, a police investigation revealed that Rudolf had recently embarked on another affair with a chorus girl named Glaser at the Karl Theater, and given her a diamond ring worth 1,200 gulden ($7,668 in 2017).31 Artur Polzer-Hoditz, who served as head of the imperial chancellery to Karl, Austria’s last emperor, later wrote of a collection of telegrams exchanged by Rudolf and Mary Vetsera at the end of 1888 that had been briefly deposited at a government archive in Vienna. These telegrams, he said, revealed that, “the Baroness’s love had become an inconvenience to the Crown Prince. This was obvious in spite of the careful language in which his refusals were couched.”32 And the exceptionally well-informed Walburga, Lady Paget, stated “as a positive fact” that she’d learned Rudolf “was not the least in love” with Mary, “and only wanted to get rid of her, but that she would not let him go.”33

  Rudolf had come to realize that the ambitious Helene Vetsera was using the liaison to attain social status and financial security—“Mary represents the last throw of the dice,” he once commented bitterly.34 Particularly telling were his remarks about Mary to Louise
of Coburg during the soiree given by Prince Reuss on January 27: “Oh, if somebody would only deliver me from her!”35 On more than one occasion Rudolf implored Marie Larisch to take Mary away from the capital. He even mentioned the idea to Mary, who sobbed, “I know what that means!” “Goodness knows I have tried my utmost to persuade her to accept Miguel of Braganza,” Rudolf confided to Larisch. “It would suit me admirably.”36 A man who desperately tried to get rid of his current mistress, wanted to send her away, and attempted to marry her off to another, was unlikely to have been besotted beyond all reason. His remarks to Marie Larisch and Louise of Coburg and his apparently curt telegrams suggest that Rudolf was attempting to end the liaison.

  Rudolf, having enjoyed the fruits of the affair, was now consumed with other interests: his new chorus girl, and especially the impending Hungarian conspiracy. He was usually adept at ending his liaisons, abruptly dispatching farewell letters and gifts once his interest had waned. And most of his conquests accepted this arbitrary cessation of imperial favor. But most of his conquests weren’t unpredictable teenage nobles given to causing public scenes. With Mary, Rudolf lacked the courage of his convictions: He’d always resorted, Latour von Thurmberg complained, to prevarication and avoidance to escape confrontation. But ending his current affair was fraught with potential dangers. With her breathless romanticism, and her spectacular capacity for attracting unwelcome attention at the opera, theater, and at balls, Mary was something of a loose cannon; pushing back against her idealized version of reality might lead to some uncomfortable display or, worse yet, propel her into some scandalous action. Rather than make a clean break, he simply withdrew, made himself unavailable, and became terse in his communications. And, sometime after December 21, perhaps driven to act by Helene Vetsera’s letter, he sent his young lover a cigarette box engraved with his name—his standard farewell present when concluding a liaison.

  But Helene did not wait for imperial action. That December she also discussed the situation with her brothers, asking them to intercede and help end the affair—though in typically tangled fashion this involved a bit of duplicitous chicanery. Aware of Franz Josef’s liaison with Katharina Schratt, Hector Baltazzi had cultivated a friendship with the actress, hoping that his flatteries and offers of fine thoroughbreds might convince her to push for his acceptance at court.37 In the summer of 1888 a concerned Franz Josef warned Schratt that it was best that she not go riding with Hector or be seen with him in public. Although he admitted that he had occasionally spoken to Baltazzi and that the empress had once been quite friendly with him and his brothers, the emperor wrote to Schratt that Hector “does not have an entirely correct reputation in racing and in money matters.”38

  When Hector’s overtures failed, his brother Alexander apparently took over: Dashing and elegant, Baltazzi supposedly charmed his way into the actress’s bed hoping to win her influence. But by December 1888 what Baltazzi most wanted was for Schratt to speak to Franz Josef about the liaison between Rudolf and Mary, asking if the emperor would end the affair.39 Surrounded by a wall of courtiers who kept him shielded from anything unpleasant, Franz Josef was likely the only aristocratic man in the capital who had no idea about the liaison. Schratt agreed, but because of an illness and the Christmas holiday she was not able to see the emperor until the middle of January; by that time unforeseen circumstances had intervened, setting the stage for the tragedy at Mayerling.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After their December 21 meeting at the Hofburg, three weeks passed before Rudolf again saw Mary. He was, it is true, away from Vienna for five days after Christmas, but his lack of interest in his lover only underscores his desire to gradually pull away from the liaison. Then, on the evening of January 13, he agreed to see Mary in his bachelor apartments at the Hofburg.

  Something critical happened that night, something that—for Mary at least—seemed to cement her place in Rudolf’s life. Two days later Mary purchased the gold cigarette case from Rodeck’s and had it engraved with the date of January 13, and the words Dank dem Glücklichen Geschicke before giving it to Rudolf.1 What “kind fate” was Mary commemorating? Almost certainly she now believed that she was pregnant. As with most things surrounding Mayerling definitive proof is lacking, but the theory is not without evidence.2 A few days after the tragedy, the Italian ambassador Count Constantine Nigra reported to Rome that Mary had “been pregnant, or thought that she was,” a bit of information he likely picked up from Papal Nuncio Galimberti. Nigra added a caveat: Examination supposedly disputed this idea.3 Stephanie’s memoirs, though, offer a cryptic hint, asserting that had Rudolf and Mary lived, “the consequences of their liaison might have been the birth of a child.”4 Citing conversations with Rudolf’s mother, Empress Eugénie of France later confided to a diplomat that Mary had been pregnant at the time of her death.5 Then, in 1955, Countess Zoë Wassilko-Serecki recalled that, according to the Taaffe papers she’d read in 1919, Mary had been either three or five months pregnant at the time of her death.6

  All of this might be dismissed as yet more gossip surrounding the story, but there is one critical piece of information that lends the idea particular weight, and it came from Mitzi Caspar, Rudolf’s longtime mistress. She was a woman with no particular ax to grind and no reason to lie. Mary, she told police agent Florian Meissner on February 3, had been four months pregnant at the time of her death.7 What makes this especially compelling is that Mitzi can only have heard the news from Rudolf himself.

  Given her experience and reputation, Mary was unlikely to have been ignorant of birth-control practices. But if she actually believed herself to be in love with Rudolf, she may have been less cautious than usual, perhaps intentionally. A pregnancy, and not sexual consummation of the affair, is likely the “fate” Mary commemorated with the cigarette case. In her exalted state of mind, she would indeed have believed that fate now tied her to the crown prince: Giving birth to Rudolf’s child would forever connect her to her beloved.

  Rudolf was unlikely to have welcomed such news, particularly when his attention was elsewhere and he was attempting to end his affair with Mary. He already had a number of illegitimate children—a situation that never seems to have troubled him. He had used the unlimited resources of the court to cover up indiscretions, pay off mothers, provide for the children, and ensure a veil of silence. But this was worryingly different. Mary wasn’t some unknown actress or singer who could disappear into obscurity without unwanted questions being asked. She was unlikely to go quietly, if at all: There’d be a price to pay to keep her silent and avoid scandal, and who knew what the ambitious Vetseras might demand? With Helene Vetsera renowned for her lack of scruples, Rudolf might have feared threats of possible exposure parlayed into financial rewards, social connections, and a grudging acquiescence to their demands that they be admitted at court.

  And yet, if Mary indeed made a confession to him, Rudolf probably nodded agreeably to appease her and avoid confrontation. With the denouement of the Hungarian conspiracy looming, his future hung in the air. If it failed he might have to flee the country or even kill himself. And, if neither outcome materialized, he could then make whatever arrangements were needed when he finally broke with Mary. Until then it was likely easier to play along with her fantasy than to destroy it.

  Illness and the Christmas holidays kept Katharina Schratt from seeing the emperor and conveying Alexander Baltazzi’s worries over the crown prince’s affair until January 17. Stunned on learning of the relationship, the emperor is said to have summoned Baltazzi to a private audience at the Hofburg a few days later and quizzed him about the details.8 Unaware of Rudolf’s own efforts to end the affair, perhaps told that Mary had visited the Hofburg on January 13, and now confronted with her family’s request, Franz Josef probably believed that the liaison was very much alive; he was now determined to stop it.

  Rudolf was oblivious to these discussions until the evening of Thursday, January 24, when Franz Josef suddenly entered the imperial box where his
son sat listening to the opera. No one had expected the emperor to attend: Ruled by order, Franz Josef had never before disrupted his schedule and appeared at a theater without warning. Something urgent drove him to see Rudolf. Not even the spell of the performance distracted the audience from staring at this unprecedented scene. They watched as Franz Josef spoke intently to his son; the entire conversation seemed strained. Finally, at the end of the second act, Franz Josef abruptly rose and left the opera.9

  It seems likely that this conversation concerned Rudolf’s liaison with Mary Vetsera. Franz Josef was adamant: Rudolf had to end the affair at once. This was not a request but an order: The Emperor even made his son promise “on his word of honor,” as Mary would write, that he would do so.10

  But what was so important that Franz Josef, who had never before interfered in Rudolf’s sexual dalliances, rushed to the opera to confront his son? In the 1950s an Austrian official and art historian, Dr. Peter Pötschner, examined Albin Vetsera’s diplomatic file for the year prior to Mary’s birth. According to the correspondence and dispatches he uncovered, Albin left to take up his post in Darmstadt the second week of May 1870, while Helene remained in Vienna. More than ten months passed before the couple reunited in the spring of 1871, just before Mary’s birth on March 19. This time frame made it extremely unlikely that Mary was Albin’s daughter.11 Indeed, when Mary was born her mother allegedly wasn’t entirely sure of her paternity: A diplomat slyly reported that, “in Vienna social circles,” Mary “was nicknamed Le Picnic, because five or six men were regarded as her potential father.”12