Elisabeth, the roaming empress

Last photo of the Empress (left) at Territet, the day before her assassination.

Everyone is always expecting Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) to take off again on a voyage.

“God knows where we shall be going next,”

writes the First Chamberlain, Baron Nopcsa, to Ida Ferenczy.

“Most fortunately, Her Majesty is a lot calmer.”

But death stalks still.  On 22 May 1889, part of Sissi’s special train derails in a curve near Frankfurt.  The victims suffer only light wounds and very great fear.  Sissi, who had been thrown against the wall of her carriage-salon, says to her daughter Maria-Valeria:

“Man is born only for unhappiness.”

Sissi drags her sadness to Bavaria, where her daughters are worried, not without reason, when they hear her sigh:

“How I envy Rudolf…”

She returns to the Tyrol, at Meran.  Praiseworthy, devoted zeal causes the publication of a notice prescribing that no-one pay attention to the Empress, who wishes “to remain in absolute retirement”.  The result is catastrophic.  The peasants hide in their fields and children run away screaming whenever the Lady in Black appears.

Climbing the little tracks – her sciatica has disappeared – she declaims in Greek.  Her professor, Doctor Widerhofer, has trouble following her, and is obliged to mount a mule.  As it is hot, the Empress removes her petticoat.  Out of discretion, the doctor wants to turn away, but, a bad cavalier, he falls from the mule and breaks his clavicule.  Sissi has only one comment, implacable:

“A malediction weighs down on all that I undertake and the beings who surround me support the consequences.”

She flees.  Palermo, Malta, Tunisia, Carthage see the Lady in Black, who now forbids that her Name Day be celebrated.  On 4 December, she is back in Vienna.  To return to the Hofburg is to live the nightmare again.  Emperor Franz-Josef writes to his actress friend Frau Schratt:

“For us, there are no more presents nor Christmas.”

On 30 January 1890, the first anniversary of Crown Prince Rudolf, Archduke of Austria’s death, Franz-Josef, Sissi and Maria-Valeria go to Mayerling.  Elisabeth had never been there before.  During the trip, she says not a word.  The pavillion has disappeared, pulled down for the most part, and, in expiation, a new church and a Carmelite convent have been built at the place of the drama.  The altar is on the spot where the Archduke had lain on his bed.

***

On 18 February, death returns to strike one of the rare men whom Elisabeth had always estimed, Andrassy.  He succumbs at sixty-seven-years-old, after months of suffering.

“My last friend, my only friend is dead,”

murmurs the Empress, weighed down by the dramas which surround her like a fatal halo.  In May, Sissi’s sister Helena, who should have been Empress of Austria, falls seriously ill.  Elisabeth goes to Ratisbonn.  Helena dies in Sissi’s arms, after an appalling battle.  The Empress is broken by so many ordeals, and the Vienna Court lives in a perpetual atmosphere of funeral wake.  Franz-Josef suffers a lot because of it.

At Bad Ischl, time passes a little less sadly.  Electricity has just been installed at the Imperial Villa, which lights up on 31 July for Maria-Valeria’s wedding.  But for Sissi, her favourite daughter’s departure is unbearable.  Elisabeth will flee, exhaust herself, give herself up to a senseless race against fatality, all the better to provoke it.

The Empress goes back to her favourite element:  the sea.  On a Danish cutter, the Chazalie, she leaves from Dover, travelling under the name of Mrs Nicolson.  The elegant steamer belongs to the Danish Ambassador to London.  The English Channel is rough.  Face to face with an angry sea, Sissi has herself attached to the main mast under the fearful gazes of the crew.  She affirms

“In the tempest, I often believe that I have, myself, become a foaming wave.”

At last, she arrives at Lisbon where there is an epidemic of cholera.  She is dissuaded from an excursion on the Tage.  Then it’s Gibraltar, Oran, Algiers, Tunisia, Ajaccio – she visits the house where Napoleon was born – Naples, Pompei, Capri, Florence.  A tour of the Mediterranean Sea which lasts two months, studded with forced marches in the little streets of the cities of the sun.

In October 1891, the palace that she has had built in Corfu is finished.  In honour of Achilles, Sissi names it the Achilleon.  A statue of the Trojan War hero is installed in front of the columns.  It is a “dying Achilles”.  Other statues, one of Rudolf and one of the German poet Heinrich Heine, take place amongst the “Roman” furniture.

But the flight continues.  The Empress is in Egypt, walking so quickly that “the secret police can only follow the sovereign by carriage”.  Sissi’s incapacity to remain still and her instantaneous movements from place to place had given her an amusing nickname in Greece:  “the railway”  or “the locomotive empress”.

***

The year 1892 begins with two family events.  On 26 January, Princess Ludovika, Duchess in Bavaria, Elisabeth’s mother, dies at the age of eighty-four.  The last tie connecting the roaming Empress to her childhood is broken.  The next day, Maria-Valeria gives birth to a girl, four weeks early.  She is, of course, baptised Elisabeth, but, to differentiate her from her cousin, Rudolf’s daughter, she is called Ella.  The joy of this birth almost hurts Sissi, who is overwhelmed by her mother’s death.

Corfu welcomes her from February to May, then a cure at Karlsbad and a stay at Godollo take her to Autumn.  She has to be forced to eat.

Christmas.  Christmas without the Empress…  The Miramar is sailing to Spain.  To be pardoned for her Christmas absence, Sissi has ordered two paintings of Katharina Schratt from the painter Franz von Matsch, one a miniature, the other a full-length portrait.

Franz-Josef writes to her every two days.  The letters await her in the Consulates:

“I want to join my most sincere wishes for happiness to the express demand that you be, in the possibly brief future accorded to us, as good and as amiable as you have always been to me…  As I do not know how to show it to you enough and because it seems to bore you, I would like to tell you that I love you infinitely…  May God bless you, protect you and allow us to see each other agreeably again.  We have nothing more to desire nor to hope…”

To be continued.

Elisabeth, the depressed empress – part 3

Empress Elisabeth of Austria with Shadow.

Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) would like to be alone, but it is impossible for her to travel without a suite.  Thirty-three people accompany her, including Doctor Skoda from Munich.  She has barely arrived in Corfu than her face takes on colour, she sleeps better and coughs less.  The truth is out:  Vienna is nocive to the Empress of Austria.  Her illness is really strange.  She can be seen bathing in wild creeks and walking under the moonlight.

Franz-Josef receives contradicting reports and decides to send Count Grunne with the mission, delicate, of finding out exactly how his spouse is.

Sending Grunne is a diplomatic error, for Sissi judges him to be under the Archduchess’ influence.  Right from his arrival, she treats him like a spy from the Hofburg.  Grunne becomes vexed, Sissi loses her temper, is sorry, but it’s too late:  the mediator has failed.  Franz-Josef, bewildered, begs Helena (Nene) to go to Corfu, for she remains Elisabeth’s favourite sister and could have a good influence on her.  Nene arrives on 23 August and goes back to being the big sister.  The two women have a long talk, and Helena is probably the first person to be able to establish the true nature of the ills suffered by the Empress.  She understands that Sissi is tortured by an aversion to her mother-in-law and anything that reminds her in any way of her despotism.  With tact, Helena exposes the exact reasons for the problem to Franz-Josef.

The Emperor listens.  We are at the end of September 1861.  In ten months, he has only lived with his wife for six little weeks.  Helena convinces him:  he will go to Corfu to have it confirmed.

Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria.

When he arrives on the island, on the morning of 13 October, he finds the Empress in good health and decides to talk to her to help her take reasonable decisions.  The most important one is to return to the Empire.  These prolonged stays in foreign lands are still having a disastrous effect.

Elisabeth agrees, but poses two conditions, the first being the rapid removal of the First Lady-in-Waiting, Countess Esterhazy, who takes part in all the domestic tyrannies;  the second being not to return directly to Vienna.  She asks to be allowed to stay in Venice first.  He accepts the transaction.  Venice is a good choice, including politically.  The couple finds itself again, united in the joy of being with their children.  Franz-Josef will have them come to Venice without his mother, he promises.  They are reassured.  Elisabeth feared that Gisela and Rudolf might forget her.  She had written to each of them during Summer, asking them in all of her letters to “think of your mummy”.

Franz-Josef, too, has appreciated the charms of Corfu.  He is optimistic.  On the evening of 21 October, he leaves his wife, happy about his pending reconnection with family life.  The Emperor of Austria has been delivered of a terrible weight:  Sissi, his Sissi, has accepted to come back…

***

Disembarking from the steam-frigate Lucia which drops anchor in Venice on 26 October, the Empress has only one wish:  not to be noticed.  But Venice is an Austrian city, and the Mayor of Venice thought to do the right thing by organizing an illumination on the Saint Mark square.  Sissi judges this idea to be regrettable.  She is above all thinking of her children, expected in a few days.  Their presence in Venice only worries Franz-Josef on one point, the mediocre quality of the drinking water.  By precaution, the Emperor organizes daily deliveries of water taken from… Schonbrunn.  In the palace’s park there flows a source, discovered in the XVIIth Century, which has given it its name, Schoner Brunnen:  beautiful fountain.

Gisela and Rudolf arrive in Venice on 3 November with Countess Esterhazy.  Sissi savours the joy of being with her children.  Of course, there is still the Countess and her angry looks…

Franz-Josef arrives on 30 November.  The atmosphere is doubly glacial.  Politically, the Venitians support less and less well the Austrian domination from which their neighbours in Lombardy have been delivered.  Family-wise, relations between the Empress and her First Lady-in-Waiting are at the paroxysm of exasperation.  After a discussion where Sissi begs her husband, the Emperor of Austria takes an immense decision:  he dismisses Countess Esterhazy.  What a relief!  What a victory over Archduchess Sophia!  And what embarrassment for Franz-Josef when he announces this measure to his mother.  To the dismissed Countess, he will offer a bracelet with his portrait, a gift which cannot efface the bitterness.

Psychologically, Sissi immediately recovers her equilibrium, and conjugal harmony is serene.  The former Austrian Ambassador to Paris, who is also staying in Venice, notes that the Emperor is still madly in love “like the first days of their marriage”.  It is with reluctance that Franz-Josef again boards his green-coloured salon-carriage, decorated with his coat-of-arms and surmounted by dragons retreating before the Roman Catholic Empire.  For Christmas, the Emperor comes back, and the family festivities unfold in an atmosphere of tenderness.  Sissi seems to be feeling better.

But it is only in appearance.  Her legs swell and she is very weak.  Obliged to immobility, she invents a new pastime which will set the whole of Europe talking:  she begins a collection of photographs.  Photography, a new art, has definitely entered into people’s lifestyles.  For the Empress of Austria, the photos are another way of travelling, of being somewhere else, a way of bringing the world before her eyes.  We could query the Empress’ exclusive wishes, for she seeks only feminine images, the most beautiful possible.  The answer is simple:  Sissi wants to measure her beauty – compromised by her health – and judge European aesthetism.  She will ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs to transmit to all the Embassies her request for photographic research.  Saint Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, London are solicited, and a hunt for photos begins.  The most delicate mission is the one entrusted to Ambassador Prokesch, in post at Constantinople.  Sissi asks the impossible of him:  photographs of the inhabitants of the harems of the Ottoman Empire.  At the cost of dangerous difficulties, the diplomat will procure a few images of languid beauties waiting to be chosen to distract the Sultan.

The arrivals of all these beauties make her realise her own state.  Sissi wants to be more beautiful.  But her feet are hurting and the pain is marking her face.  It sometimes takes two people to help her walk.  Her health is, once more, alarming.

To be continued.