He announced his resignation personally to a fresh deputation at 9.00 p.m. and then strode impassively through the hostile crowd in the corridors, to return to the chancellery.
Mélanie greeted him. 'Well, are we all dead?' she asked. 'Yes, my dear, we're dead,' he replied. He told her that he was relieved to have no more responsibility:
The overthrow of the existing social order is now inevitable. I could not have stopped it because I was alone today, supported by no-one. I could not have avoided making concessions which must inevitably lead to disaster, and I have escaped the shame of signing them.
He had no illusions; he knew that his resignation alone was enough to precipitate revolution. He went to bed and, so his wife tells us, slept 'the sleep of the just'. It was his last night at the Ballhausplatz.
Next day Vienna was still more disturbed. Pauline, who was in the chancellery with her mother Leopoldine, remembered gangs of men throwing stones at their windows and jeering at the sentries. In the afternoon the Metternichs fled, on foot through the gardens, to Count Taafe's house in the Löwenstrasse a quarter of a mile away. Baron von Hügel, whose brother had once been engaged to Mélanie, found them there. 'I could not desert the old man with the broken frame and the broken heart,' he recalled. Count Rechberg took the younger members of the family to safety by train, but the ex-chancellor had to be more cautious. Escorted by Hügel, after dark Metternich and his wife left the Löwenstrasse by cab to where a carriage stood waiting to take them to a castle of Prince Liechtenstein at Feldsberg, near what is now the Czech border. They arrived in the small hours of the morning, Metternich collapsing from nervous exhaustion. On 22 March, they were informed that the Ministerkonferenz wished them to leave within twenty-four hours. They thought of going to Plass, since the peasants and foundryworkers there had written offering to protect them. However, Leontine—who, with Richard, had rejoined them—argued that England would be safer.
The little party travelled as inconspicuously as it could, by train and coach (their two vehicles being put on board the train when necessary) for nine days throughout Bohemia and Germany, under assumed names. They would have been penniless but for Hügel, till the Rothschilds came to the rescue with a large loan. Mélanie was terrified, trembling every time she saw a student. Eventually they reached Arnhem in Holland, where Metternich again collapsed; he was suffering from kidney trouble, in agony from the jolting of the carriage. There were rumours of revolution in England, so they waited at Arnhem for confirmation.
The Prince was distressed by reports in the newspapers of uprisings all over Europe; Mélanie confided to her diary, 'Our Monarchy is in the process of falling apart.' She was moved by her husband's stoicism—'his calm, his magnanimity, his patriotism, which makes him reject any thought of Austria having been ungrateful'. He was cheered by letters from the Empress and the Archduchess Sophia, mother of the heir to the throne. The former wrote that he would always be a great man, whatever happened—'é sempre grande nella prosperità é nella tribolazione.' Sophia told him how much Austria owed him, including 'mon pauvre Franzi'—'I have to thank you for all the good you have done my son this winter, shaping his ideas.'
News reached them of the ignominious failure of the great Chartist demonstration in London on 10 April. They left from Rotterdam on Wednesday 19 on board the mail ship Rainbow, crowded with sheep and cattle, and steamed up the Thames the following morning—colliding with a sailing vessel which smashed one of the paddlewheels. According to The Times, there was no one to meet them when they disembarked at Blackwall Pier, but the stationmaster placed a railway carriage at their disposal which brought them into London. From Fenchurch Street Station they took a cab to the Brunswick Hotel in Hanover Square, where accommodation had been reserved, arriving at 11.00 a.m. They learnt that the Duke of Wellington had already called. Mélanie wrote in her diary, 'I thanked God for our safe arrival and asked myself if what had happened had only been an awful dream.'
19
The Sage of the Rennweg
I was a rock of order.
METTERNICH to Baron von Hübner, 1859
For God's sake, no ultimatum to Italy!
METTERNICH to Emperor Francis Joseph, 1859
The fair wind which brought the Metternichs to London never left them. As far as any exile could be, theirs was a pleasant one. Financial needs were met by the Tsar and the Rothschilds, while society lionised them. In a surprisingly short time the revolutions collapsed all over Europe—within three years the Metternichs would be able to return to Vienna and a dignified retirement on the Rennweg.
Metternich liked England immediately. He was flattered by the attention paid to him despite his fall from power. The Times chronicled his movements; as soon as he arrived it reported that he was 'looking well and appears to have suffered but little from the anxiety he has recently undergone'. Nearly every day the Duke of Wellington rode from Apsley House to 44 Eaton Square, which the Prince rented from Lord Denbigh. (It is still there.) There was a stream of visitors, including such friends from the past as Aberdeen and Londonderry, together with public figures like Lord Brougham or Lord Lyndhurst. They attended Wellington's annual Waterloo banquet, went to a masked ball at Londonderry House. They met Guizot, who had also taken refuge in London, and their old enemy Palmerston.
An old acquaintance who called at the Brunswick Hotel the day after their arrival was Luigi Lablache, the great basso of the operas of Rossini and Donizetti, the original Don Pasquale. His voice could shatter a window. Metternich had first heard him at Vienna in 1824 with Barbaia's company. The Times reported that 'the celebrated singer, who had enjoyed the friendship of Prince Metternich for many years, was honoured by His Highness with an interview'.
Metternich at once made friends with Benjamin Disraeli, leader of the Parliamentary Opposition, with whom he had much in common. He advised him to rename his fragmented Tory party the 'Conservatives', advice which was taken. Deeply impressed by his political genius and kindly, amusing personality, Disraeli told him, 'You are the only philosophical statesman I have ever encountered.' Mélanie noted in June that Disraeli was attacking the government violently, blaming them for all the upheavals on the continent. Her husband may well have given him ammunition.
By May 1848, European affairs seemed to be going from bad to worse. The Imperial family fled to Innsbruck and a Committee of Public Safety was set up in Vienna. Prague and Budapest were in the hands of liberal extremists, while Milan had been lost. Northern Italy expected 'freedom' at any moment, to be brought by Piedmontese troops. Then suddenly the tide began to turn; in the second half of June Prince Windischgrätz shelled his way into Prague and the Czech revolution was over. In the following month the Piedmontese withdrew from Lombardy after being heavily defeated by Field Marshal Radetzky, who reoccupied Milan, while Croats loyal to the Emperor rose under their viceroy Jellačić against the Hungarians.
Mélanie, who in June had been writing 'there is no madness, no crime, left uncommitted', began to cheer up in August. The Metternichs went to a reception given by the Palmerstons at which 'Palmerston pretended to be glad at our success in Italy'. (Disraeli again attacked the foreign secretary in Parliament; Palmerston was enraged when he recognised turns of phrase which could only have come from Metternich.) 'The revolution seems to be losing ground,' Mélanie noted in September. However, she was very upset to learn that her cousin Isztván Széchenyi had gone mad. In October, not without a certain satisfaction, her husband told Disraeli:
Count Széchenyi suddenly got to the point where truth which had hitherto eluded him appeared naked before him. He went mad and is at present in a mental home outside Vienna. The doctors have not given up all hope of curing him and I share their optimism in view of his current condition. He has moments of lucidity when he looks back into the past. 'Prince Metternich has always told me how wrong I have been. He has warned me not to interfere with the foundations of a building lest it collapse. I have failed to profit from his advice. I have destroyed my
own country.' Then he lapses into madness again.
In Mélanie's words, Eaton Square proved 'horribly dear'. The Brighton Guardian was therefore able to announce under 'Fashionable News' that on 15 September 'Prince Metternich and suite arrived at 42 Brunswick Terrace'. They were met at the station by Colonel Eld, the town's master of ceremonies, and escorted to the house, which turned out to be superior to Eaton Square in every way. (A pleasant, cream-washed Regency building on the front, it is now the Alexandra Hotel.) 'Brighton is a charming town,' Metternich wrote two days later. 'Our house doesn't face the harbour, since Brighton doesn't have one, but it faces the beach.' He wrote and received countless letters, read the newspapers, accepted an invitation to join the Brighton Conservative Club. Otherwise he lived a very quiet life. He enjoyed watching the ships in the distance, describing the Channel as 'a species of maritime Corso': since his arrival there had never been less than twenty-eight vessels in sight, sometimes as many as forty. He commented on the deserted state of his old friend George IV's Pavilion, which was falling into ruin because no one wanted to buy it. Exactly two months later, after a spell of unusually fine weather, he was writing, 'I know of no place better for the health than Brighton.' He was delighted at finding in a garden not far from their house a huge magnolia tree finer than any he had ever seen, even in Italy.
'Our three saviours, Windischgrätz, Radetzky and Jellačić, will, I hope, raise up our poor Monarchy again,' Mélanie confided to her diary in October. Her husband said that only one word described the condition of Europe—'anarchy'. Yet he saw a certain logic in the way in which order was undoubtedly being restored. He was amused by the shift in English public opinion which he discerned in The Morning Post—'Radical only a few months ago, this paper is now conservative.'
At the end of October in a battle near what is now Vienna Airport, Jellačić's Croats prevented the Hungarians from reinforcing the Viennese revolutionaries. Windischgrätz was able to fight his way in and recapture the city, before dealing with the Hungarians. On 21 November the iron-willed Prince Felix Schwarzenberg was appointed first minister; on 2 December the Emperor Ferdinand abdicated in favour of his nephew, the eighteen-year-old Francis Joseph. It was only a matter of time before the full reestablishment of the Monarchy.
Meanwhile, Prince Metternich was living a vigorous social life. The Brighton season began in November. The Duke of Devonshire gave splendid balls at his house in Lewes Crescent, all attended by the Metternich family. The Duke took the Prince to the French opera in his private box. The Metternichs' old friend from Vienna, Jenny Lind, sang at concerts in the town hall, conducted by another old friend, Johann Strauss the Elder. Lord Aberdeen came down from London to see the Prince, while those members of the Royal Family who remained faithful to Brighton (the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and the Duchess of Gloucester) visited him. At the Bedford Hotel he met the historian Lord Macaulay—who shocked Mélanie by suggesting that the Pope should retire to a flat in Paris.
Another old friend was staying at the Bedford, Princess Lieven, accompanied by her lover Guizot. Pauline Metternich, who saw her a few months later, describes her as looking like a family portrait. 'She always dressed in black, wore an enormous hat, had a green shade over her eyes, and carried a gigantic fan,' Pauline recalls. 'She paraded before us, stately and imposing, without so much as deigning to glance at us poor earthworms.' Neither of the former lovers were keen to see each other again, but Mélanie insisted on bringing them together.
Darya gives a characteristically acid vignette of husband and wife:
She is plump, vulgar, natural, kind, easy-going; he is serene, pleased with himself, and never stops talking, very tedious, slow and deaf, very intellectual indeed, boring when he talks about himself and his infallibility, charming when he speaks of the past, especially about the Emperor Napoleon.
He told Darya how when he had gone to Pius VII with the Emperor's bribe of a pension of twenty million francs if he would obey, the Pope answered that fifteen sous a day were enough for him to live on. 'I was never so proud as when I brought this reply to Napoleon.'
In December the Metternichs were Wellington's guests at Stratfield Saye. Metternich was touched by the Duke's warm welcome, enjoyed the comfort and luxury, and was intrigued by the strict timetable of a great English country house. 'If I have a criticism of this way of life, it is that one eats too much.'
Lord Palmerston called at Brunswick Terrace. (In February the then Austrian chancellor had spoken of the foreign secretary as 'placing himself at the heart of every disturbance in Europe . . . a demented leader . . . a mixture of sour feeling with a weakness for bad jokes and a facile grasp of foreign affairs combined with unequalled frivolity in action'.) Palmerston questioned him closely about Austria's new leaders. When he came to Baron Jellačić, the Croat paladin who had helped to regain Vienna for the Monarchy, Metternich—who tells the story himself—replied:
'I never saw him, which is scarcely surprising since the canaille never came near me and I had no desire to go looking for him. All I know about the man is that he was a man of letters and a Jew.' 'A Jew'? asked Palmerston, who almost fell off his chair. 'Yes, a Jew, but that isn't why he's been shot' I answered.
Eventually the misunderstanding was cleared up; very deaf, Metternich had heard 'Jellinek' for 'Jellačić'.
Metternich may have reflected on Palmerston's smug insistence in 1847 that the Pope's reforms would bring stability. A fortnight before Palmerston's visit, the pontiff's 'prime minister' had been stabbed to death, Pio Nono fleeing in disguise; Mazzini's men would shortly set up a Roman republic in the Eternal City. Metternich had predicted all these developments.
A more welcome visitor was the MP for Buckinghamshire, who travelled down by train in January 1849 to ask advice. 'I never heard such divine talk,' Mr Disraeli told his wife. 'He gave me the most masterly exposition of the present state of European affairs, and said a greater number of wise and witty things than I ever recollected hearing from him on the same day.' His host, who knew a political genius when he saw one, was encouraged by the future leader of the Conservative party being so well disposed towards Austria and towards the traditional order in Europe as a whole.
Although the train to London took less than two hours, Mélanie wanted to be nearer the capital. They could not afford Eaton Square again, but she found a house at Richmond, into which they moved in April 1849 after spending a few nights at Mirvat's Hotel in Brook Street (soon to be renamed Claridges). The garden ran down to the towpath besides the Thames. 'A magnificent cedar of Lebanon on the lawn beneath our windows takes the place of the big lime tree in my garden at Vienna,' he wrote happily. 'They live in a most charming old house on Richmond Green, called the Old Palace,' Disraeli informed Lady Londonderry. 'Nothing can be conceived more picturesque.' Yet he was worried by Metternich's appearance—'much altered, very extenuated'. He had been attacked by a species of anaemia and began to have fainting fits. No doubt the shock of 'March '48' was partly responsible. Fortunately, his mind was unimpaired.
In April Hungary declared herself an independent republic, but in July Tsar Nicholas would keep the promise he had given long ago, Russian troops joining with Austrian to crush the Magyars. The Monarchy had survived. Yet there was no question of Prince Metternich returning to Austria. For in June the Viennese press had accused him of taking bribes from St Petersburg amounting to 750,000 ducats a year and of 'squandering state funds'; a commission of enquiry was set up, his palaces and estates being confiscated until its findings should be announced. He was totally dependent on the generosity of the Tsar and of the Rothschilds.
Despite his poor health Metternich was not unhappy at Richmond. The house was full of young folk, his last child, Lothar, being only twelve. The stream of visitors continued. Among them was Darya Lieven; in July she told a friend that Clemens had a fainting fit every day—'Those close to him are worried and certainly they are bad symptoms at seventy-six.' Another visitor was Princess Bagration, once the 'Naked
Angel' of the Congress of Vienna and the mother of his illegitimate daughter (Countess Blome, who had died in 1828). She was still as scantily dressed as ever, despite being nearly seventy and having aged very badly. 'It was a sight for the gods to watch my grandfather, always so dignified and patrician in appearance, towing this poor shrivelled mummy on his arm to the table,' Pauline tells us unfeelingly. Princess Bagration still flirted desperately with him. Johann Strauss the Elder came too, telling Princess Mélanie that the Viennese were beginning to realize they had made a mistake. 'It's a bit late now,' was her comment.
Metternich genuinely liked what he saw of England and the English. 'What makes this great country so strong is its unshakeable conviction of the value of law and order, and of liberty, which can really function on such foundations,' he had written only a few days after his arrival. Moreover, 'I meet all my old friends and that hospitality which is not just an empty phrase but a special quality of this nation.' If he was deeply hurt by Queen Victoria ignoring him, what would nowadays be called the Establishment went on feting him, including the Whig prime minister Lord John Russell (although Lady John was very rude to Mélanie, telling her that she supported the Hungarians). He was always treated as the greatest living expert on European affairs, and he could count on his views on any subject being well aired in The Times whenever he chose—apparently by 'inspiring' a friendly journalist. 'I couldn't have been better received if I'd been John Bull himself,' he observed. Strangers would come up to him in the street and insist on shaking his hand. He credited the English with 'a vast amount of common sense', together with 'calmness of a sort which has long been forgotten on the Continent and for which it ought to rediscover a taste, for its own good'. He even approved of the political system, 'diametrically opposed to that sort of Liberalism which is doing such harm elsewhere in Europe'. When discussing English parliamentarism, he made a comment worthy of Bagehot: 'In old England only things have value, while men have value simply as the representatives of things.'
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