The life of the emperor Francis Joseph

by Francis Henry Gribble

CHAPTER XXI

What the Archduchess Stéphanie knew—What Rudolph knew that she knew—The search for Mary Vetsera by her relatives—The news of the Meyerling tragedy—The two official versions—The many unofficial versions—The attempt to hush the matter up—Mary Vetsera’s letter to Countess Marie Larisch.

Meyerling was Rudolph’s hunting-box in the forest, not many miles from Vienna: a hunting-box not used for purposes of sport alone. The Crown Prince had his boon companions, as well as his artistic and intellectual friends; and he used to revel and drink deep with them in this secluded and beautiful resort. It was also whispered that his hunting-box was his Parc-aux-Cerfs: the place, at all events, at which he made romantic assignations. Rumour credited him with a good many of these: assignations with society ladies, assignations with gamekeepers’ daughters, &c., &c. It may be, of course, that rumour exaggerated, but there certainly was fire as well as smoke.

Stéphanie had been taken to Meyerling, and had admired its beauties. “What a lovely place to live in!” she had exclaimed. “Yes, and what a lovely place to die in!” Rudolph had replied, speaking morbidly, but without any deliberately ominous intention. That in the course of the honeymoon, and before estrangement had begun; but estrangement had come quickly, and had continued without intermission. Rudolph complained that the love-light had never shone in Stéphanie’s eyes; but it does not seem that he tried very hard or very long to kindle it. Those eyes, he confided to a friend, “seemed incapable of expressing any feelings save those of wariness and suspicion”; and the time came when Stéphanie, as little in love with him as he with her, but more obedient to duty, not only suspected, but knew.

And Rudolph knew that she knew. The ball-room scene, described in the last chapter, would have proved that to him, even if there had been no other evidence; but he was aware, as a matter of fact, that Stéphanie had been not only watching him, but following him. There was a day when Rudolph went to visit Mary Vetsera in a hired carriage, and Stéphanie drove behind him, but unseen by him, in a carriage from the Imperial stables. She stopped outside the house which he had entered, and there changed carriages, returning to the Palace in his hired conveyance, and instructing the driver of the Imperial carriage to wait for him. It was quite impossible for Rudolph, after that, to flatter himself that his wife was ignorant of his proceedings; but there is no reason for supposing that he cared very much whether she was ignorant of them or not.

People have said that he wanted Stéphanie to divorce him in order that he might be free to marry Mary Vetsera. The story is also told—we have already spoken of it—that he was plotting for the throne of Hungary in the belief that the Hungarians, who loved him, would have been willing to accept Mary Vetsera as their Queen; but Countess Marie Larisch, who is our sole first-hand authority for the plot, disclaims all personal knowledge of it. She was pressed on the point before her much-discussed book appeared, and her replies to the questions put to her were explicit. “No,” she said, “I have no first-hand knowledge of the matter. I only repeat what I was told—what I heard from the Archduke John Salvator—what Julius Andrassy hinted—what was current among those who were in a position to know. The existence of a plot to seize the throne of Hungary was the only possible inference from their confidences.”

THE CROWN PRINCESS STÉPHANIE.

That is very indirect evidence, and, in the strict sense of the word, it is not evidence at all; but we shall have to return to the story when the Archduke John Salvator comes upon the scene. Most likely there was, at any rate, some loose talk on the subject; most likely Mary Vetsera herself had heard the talk and been impressed by it. A man will sometimes, as we all know, confide to a slip of a girl secrets which he jealously withholds from his most intimate male friends; and such a girl is very prone to believe anything which she wishes to believe—her imagination quickly transforming a vague possibility into a precise certainty. There is nothing, therefore, absurd on the face of it in the theory that Mary Vetsera went to Meyerling in the belief that she would presently leave Meyerling to be crowned at Buda. Nor is it unlikely—for reasons given in the last chapter—that her hopes, and her disposition to chatter about them, made it urgently necessary for Rudolph to see her on the subject and find a means of putting a bridle on her tongue.

At any rate, Mary Vetsera did go to Meyerling; and Countess Marie Larisch, who had taken her to the Hofburg and lost her there, had to explain her disappearance to the members of her family, and see if she could put them in the way of finding her. She describes a family gathering at which the Baroness Vetsera, justifying the sobriquet of Baronne Cardinal, displayed complete indifference to her daughter’s adventures, but her brother, Alexander Baltazzi, was furious, and insisted that Countess Marie should accompany him to the prefecture of police. She complied; and she describes that interview too: a remarkable interview at which Alexander Baltazzi inquired indignantly whether the Habsburgs were to be “allowed to behave like common ravishers,” and the Chief of the Secret Police replied that it was no part of his constabulary duty to interfere with the Crown Prince’s amours. And then:—

“But perhaps you don’t realise,” said I, “that this young lady belongs to the aristocracy?”

“Then it’s not one of the bourgeoisie? Oh, that’s quite another story,” replied the functionary. “Very well, I will see what I can do.”

For the policeman, as for Windischgraetz, mankind evidently began with the baron; and he gave the information. “His Imperial Highness is at Alland,”[3] he announced; but the announcement came too late. It had hardly been made—and no action had yet been taken on account of it—when the telegraph flashed its startling news from Meyerling to Vienna. The Crown Prince had died suddenly at Meyerling—of apoplexy.

[3] Alland is quite close to Meyerling.

That was the first story, officially given out; but it was found that it could not be maintained. People did not believe it—naturally enough, seeing that it is almost an unknown thing for a man of Rudolph’s age to die of apoplexy. It might have obtained credence—or, at all events, it might have been upheld in the face of scepticism—if it could have been substantiated by a medical certificate; but that certificate could not be procured. The doctors were asked to draft and sign it; but they refused to do so. They were then asked at least to give a certificate of death from heart failure on the ground that failure of the heart’s action played its part in every death; but they would not do that either. So that violence had to be admitted; and an amended official version of the story was issued to the effect that the Crown Prince had committed suicide by shooting himself.

Even so, public opinion was not satisfied. The medical certificates were called for; and when they were published they were severely criticised. There were two such certificates, and they contradicted each other; and neither of them would have been accepted in an English criminal court as compatible with the theory of suicide. According to one certificate, the bullet entered the head behind the ear and carried off the top part of the skull; according to the other, it had entered by the left temple and issued by the right temple. The critics pointed out that Rudolph was most unlikely to have shot himself in the left temple, because he was not left-handed, and that it was materially impossible for him to have shot himself from behind.

The inference was clear. If Rudolph had been shot, and had not shot himself, then he must have been shot by some other person. That is to say, either there had been an accident or he had been murdered. But if there had been an accident, there would have been no need to envelop it in mystery or tell certificated lies about it; so the hypothesis of murder held the field. But who could have murdered him, and why should he have been murdered? Conjecture fastened itself on those problems, and found solution for them: solutions which varied accordingly, as the speculators knew, or did not know, that Mary Vetsera, as well as the Crown Prince, was involved in the tragedy, and that her death, as well as his, had to be accounted for. The theories which obtained the widest credence were the following:—

1. Rudolph had been killed in the course of a drunken quarrel by one of his boon companions.

2. Rudolph had been pursuing the daughter of a gamekeeper with his attentions. The gamekeeper had caught him in flagrante delicto, and had shot him without waiting to ascertain who he was. His body had been carried into his bedroom in the hunting-box, and the suicide tableau had been arranged in order to cover up the scandal.

3. One of the Baltazzis, jealous of his niece’s honour, had tracked Mary Vetsera to Meyerling, and had there committed the double murder.

Not one of these three theories will hold water, in view of the facts which have since been brought to light. The first and second may be set aside on the ground that there is nothing in either of them to account for the death of Mary Vetsera. The third theory is incompatible with statements, the truth of which there is no reason to doubt, made by Countess Marie Larisch in “My Past.”

That, in Countess Marie’s book, we have “the secret of Meyerling disclosed” is an exaggerated claim; and there are weak points in her narrative which it is important to enumerate. She was not at Meyerling at the time of the tragedy, nor was she present when the dead bodies were discovered. All that she tells us on that branch of the subject is second-hand evidence, derived from Count George Stockau and the Court physician, Dr. Wiederhofer. But there were two things, not known to the general public, which she did know. She knew:—

1. That the Baltazzis had tried in vain to discover Mary Vetsera’s whereabouts.

2. That they knew nothing of the tragedy until Alexander Baltazzi and his brother-in-law, Count George Stockau, were ordered to proceed to Meyerling, in a closed carriage, accompanied by a member of the secret police, and remove Mary Vetsera’s body for secret burial in the cemetery of the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz.

“And,” said the policeman, “you are to support the body between you in such a way as to make it appear that the Baroness still lives.”

The purpose of that order was clear enough. The matter was to be hushed up and the truth to be concealed, no matter whose feelings suffered in the process, in order that scandal might be avoided and the remnants of the Crown Prince’s reputation be preserved. Mary Vetsera’s name was not to be mentioned in connection with the Meyerling affair, but it was to be given out—all her relatives being parties to the deception—that she had died a natural death elsewhere. But that end was not achieved. It leaked out—as such things do leak out—that Mary Vetsera and the Crown Prince had died together; and the next thing to be done was to get rid of the theory of murder, and produce evidence in support of the theory of suicide. And here it is important to note that we are faced by a direct conflict of testimony.

The medical certificates, as we have seen, demonstrate that Rudolph did not shoot himself, but was shot; but the inference which they compel was never formally drawn from them in any court of investigation; and presently letters were handed to the Press, in which both Rudolph and Mary Vetsera appeared to have announced their intention of taking their own lives. The first letter was from Rudolph to the Duke of Braganza:—

“DEAR FRIEND,

“It is necessary that I should die. No other course is open to me. I hope you are well.

“I remain,
At your service,
RUDOLPH.”

The other letter was from Mary Vetsera to her mother:—

“DEAR MOTHER,

“I am going to die with Rudolph. We love each other too much. I ask your forgiveness and say farewell.

“Your very unhappy
MARY.”

Nobody has ever regarded those letters—or other similar letters which have been circulated—as anything but forgeries. They impress one, indeed, not only as forgeries, but as clumsy forgeries. But here again Countess Marie Larisch makes a new contribution to the inquiry. Three weeks after Mary Vetsera’s death, she says, she received the following letter, found on the bedside table at Meyerling, but held back by the police:—

“DEAR MARIE,

“Forgive me all the trouble I have caused. I thank you so much for everything you have done for me. If life becomes hard for you, and I fear it will after what we have done, follow us. It is the best thing you can do.

“Your
MARY.”

It is a thousand pities that Countess Marie Larisch did not reproduce that letter in facsimile; for that is clearly the manner in which such documents should be put in evidence. Had that course been adopted, the critic, in attempting to reconstruct the story, would have been able to treat the scrap of manuscript as the sole authoritative deposition. As it has not been adopted, other critics would be entitled to deny his right to do so; and he can only give it its due place together with other evidence derived from other sources. Perhaps the ultimate result will be pretty much the same; but we will see.