CHAPTER XXIII
The Archduke John Salvator—His many accomplishments—His criticisms of his superiors—His disgrace at Court—His love affair with an English lady—“Your darling Archduckling”—His proposal to abandon his rank and earn his living as a teacher of languages—His love affair with Milly Stübel—He quarrels with Francis Joseph, takes the name of John Orth, and leaves Austria.
“John Orth,” as we shall have to call him, was the Archduke John Salvator: the brother of the Grand Duke of Tuscany—the uncle of the Archduke who was to become “Herr Wulfling,” and of the Princess who was to marry Signor Toselli. This is the branch of the House of Habsburg which has been most conspicuous in its revolt against the Habsburg traditions; and the Archduke John Salvator’s place among them is that of the first of the family rebels. He was not only a rebel in love; he also caused trouble, and got into trouble, as soldier and politician.
He was a man of many accomplishments: one who “fancied himself,” not only as a soldier, and a sailor, and a pamphleteer, but also as a musical composer. He composed a waltz, which enjoyed a great vogue, not only in Vienna; and then, suspecting that its popularity might be due to his rank, he decided to compose something more ambitious, and produce it anonymously. The great work was a ballet—Les Assassins—which was duly staged at the Vienna Opera as the production of a new and unknown man. Its anonymity would not have impaired its prospects if the Vienna Opera had had a Press agent who knew his business as the modern Press agents know theirs. Dark hints, mysteriously whispered, would then have stimulated the curiosity of the public and invited the applause of the connoisseurs and leaders of opinion. But the Press agents did not know their business—perhaps there were no Press agents in those days; and the ballet itself, though pretty good for an Archduke, did not come up to the standard of professional musicians. Its reception was chilly, and its run was short; so the Archduke John Salvator turned his activity into other channels.
While little more than a boy he became a military critic and a political agitator, publishing his first pamphlet on the organisation of the Austrian army when he was no more than twenty-one. The gist of his remarks was that the Austrian military system had got into a rut, and that the Austrian artillery was defective. Incidentally, too, he criticised the conduct of the Austrian Foreign Office; and the Foreign Minister made representations, with the result that the Archduke was sent to Cracow, to be out of the way. In his exile, however, he wrote more pamphlets, setting forth that the frontier fortifications were valueless, and that the War Minister did not know his business. He also lectured at the Military Club on the Austrian system of military education, which he declared to be wooden, and to deprive the soldiers of all initiative and resource. That lecture was a veiled attack upon the Archduke Albert, the victor of Custozza; so the Archduke John Salvator was once more politely exiled—this time to a command at Linz.
Decidedly this Archduke was frondeur, with inclinations towards Liberalism; and there were precedents for those inclinations in his family. He was the grandson of that Grand Duke of Tuscany who put an end to the Inquisition in his dominions; and an ancestor of his had been the first legitimate potentate to recognise the French Republic after the Revolution. Nothing was more natural, therefore, than that he should have a good word to say for the Austrian rebels of 1848; though it was inevitable that his praise of them should shock conservative circles. So he sulked at Linz, while officialdom sulked at Vienna; and there was further commotion when he posed his candidature, without asking the Emperor’s leave, for the vacant throne of Bulgaria. The Crown Prince was sent to him, to inform him that he had incurred Francis Joseph’s displeasure; and he was stripped even of his rights over his own regiment of artillery.
If he and Rudolph did, as Countess Marie Larisch suggests, put their heads together and talk about a coup d’état and the usurpation of the throne of Hungary, that punishment may well have furnished the starting point of their treasonable confabulations. The two Archdukes were close friends and kindred spirits: among other enterprises, they had combined to expose the spiritualistic medium, Harry Bastian, to the horror and disgust of the superstitious sections of Viennese society. Moreover, the Archduke John Salvator may be supposed to have sympathised with Rudolph’s love affairs, for he had, as we are about to see, a very similar love affair of his own. These facts no doubt furnish a prelude, more or less fitting, to his appearance in Countess Marie Larisch’s narrative as the mysterious stranger to whom she handed Rudolph’s steel casket of compromising documents; and if Countess Marie’s recollection of what he said to her on that occasion is correct, he was himself the principal person whom those documents might have compromised:—
“Never mind,” she reports him as saying. “Things have happened for the best; you could not save a coward like Rudolph, but you’ve saved my life.”
And he added that he was going to “die without dying,” because he was “tired of the hollow things of life”; and her comment is:—
“Has he died without dying? I think so. And I believe that the Archduke, despite all evidence to the contrary, will return in his own good time.”
And Princess Louisa of Tuscany, it is to be noted, says pretty much the same. To her also, and to her brother Leopold, the Archduke John Salvator announced his intentions:—
“I am about to disappear, my dear children, and I shall do so in such a manner that no one will ever find me. When the Emperor is dead I will return, for then Austria will require my services.”
And her comment is:—
“Papa was convinced to the day of his death that his brother was alive; and, as time proves all things, the Emperor’s death will perhaps solve the mystery, for Austria may then require the services of John Orth in the international complications which will no doubt follow.”
But all that is mere conjecture; and the conjectures belong to a later stage of the story. The solid fact to be set down here is that the Archduke John Salvator, having received the signification of Francis Joseph’s displeasure, sought and obtained Francis Joseph’s permission to quit the Austrian army, and retired to live quietly at his Castle of Orth, on the shores of the Lake of Gmunden. But his position and aspirations had, meanwhile, been complicated by a love affair with a fascinating nymph of the ballet.
It was not his first love affair: the woman who first taught the Archduke John Salvator to love was English. He met her, when he was only a lieutenant of hussars, on an Austrian Lloyd steamer, in the course of a journey from Port Said to Trieste. One of his letters to her has got into the hands of those who collect such things; and it shows us the Archduke already cherishing the dream dreamt by so many Habsburgs of flying from pomp in order to indulge an honourable passion, and proving himself as capable as any meaner man of supporting a family by honest toil. It will be seen that he expresses his contempt for his illustrious title by a pretty play upon words. This is the communication:—
“Most darlingest of angel girls. I must lavish on you terms of endearment. You are my loveliest love, mia cara carissima, ma petite chérie, my own sweet rose of Kent. I thought myself often in love before I had the happiness to meet you, but was mistaken. You fill my soul as nobody else has ever done. I am in despair at being told I must not pay you further attention. My Imperial rank stands in the way, say you and your honoured mother, of courtship pour le bon motif. It should, did I not realise the utter vanity of being penned up with a tribe of seventy relatives on an isolated peak. I hate my position, and am determined to live as a man should, and not like a poor creature who must be spoon-fed from the cradle to the grave. It depends on you whether I shall go on as an ‘arch-duckling’ or not. You spoke of the sad life of Penny Smith. Yes, it was a sad one; but why? The Prince of Capua had not the manliness to go and work for a living for himself and his wife. My courage is equal to emigrating to Australia, where I am sure I should fall on my feet. I could be a manager of a theatre, a teacher of French, German, Italian, or the curator of a zoo or a botanical garden, or I could be a riding-master or a stock-rider. Without going so far as Australia, I might get married in Italy to the girl of my choice. I was born a Tuscan, and the statutes of the grand-ducal family are dead letters there. As you can never be an Archduchess, I shall be only too happy to cease to be an Archduke, but hope ever to be counted your darling Archduckling.
“JOHANN.
“——or, since you like my soft Italian name, Giovanni—but not on any account (Don) Juan.”
It is, in very truth, a remarkable document; but it is the sort of document which never surprises one when emanating from a Habsburg pen—and perhaps ought not to surprise one when emanating from any royal or imperial pen. In the House of Habsburg, as in many other royal and imperial houses—and notably those of the Wittelsbachs and the Neapolitan Bourbons—we find many men and women who have combined great ardour in love with a passionate desire for the domestic tranquillity of the common lot, and the lives of obscure citizens of the middle classes. Examples which occur on the spur of the moment are those of Queen Cristina of Spain, who married ex-Private Muñoz, the son of a Madrid tobacconist, and played parlour games in the Palace with that tobacconist and his family; of Queen Cristina’s sister, the Duchesse de Berry, who married, en secondes noces, the impecunious young diplomat, Lucchesi-Palli, and bore him innumerable children; of that Archduke John, who was united so happily to the daughter of the village postmaster; of that Archduke Henry, whose wife, Leopoldine Hoffmann, the actress, was created Countess of Waldeck.
Such were the exemplars—though one could name many more—whose temperament and tastes the Archduke John Salvator shared; but his advances, as both the letter and the sequel show, did not this time inspire confidence. The lady, it seems, did not love him for himself alone—saw no beauty in the prospect of becoming the bride of a teacher of languages, or a riding-master, or the curator of the Zoological Gardens at Sydney or Melbourne; and perhaps she was, from the worldly point of view, wise. Habsburgs who are ready to turn their hands to anything have sometimes had to turn their hands to very menial occupations. Within the last few years an appeal was made to Francis Joseph to do something for a Habsburg—a descendant of the Archduke Ernest—who had fallen (or risen) to be head waiter in a café at Buda-Pesth. The lady whom the Archduke John Salvator had once proposed to support in modest comfort by means of honest toil may since perhaps have heard of that incident with curiously mixed emotions.
At all events, she did not marry the Archduke—her mother, as appears from the letter, intervening; and he, on his part, did not keep single for her sake—or, at all events, did not keep unattached. Princess Louisa tells us that he wanted to marry her, his niece, the future bride of Signor Toselli; but that is as it may be. His desire to do so was, at any rate, kept under control. One thinks of him rather as one of those Habsburgs whom the bare idea of consanguineous marriage revolts; and one knows that he met his fate, in a sentimental sense, while shooting with some of his brother officers in the Semmering district. One cannot do better than borrow the poetical picture of the scene presented to us by his biographer, Mme. de Faucigny-Lucinge:—
“It was one of those moments when the human soul feels the need of fusion and communion with the mysteries of nature. The Prince was walking in a favourite path of his—a discreet refuge in which his companions had always been accustomed to leave him alone. Of a sudden he found himself in the presence of a girl whose delicate features and pensive gaze attracted his attention. Her eyes were gentle, and her lips were lighted with a smile. As he overheard her talking with her parents, it seemed to the Archduke that he had long been familiar with that melodious voice, so fraught with enchantment to all who listened to it; for the things which most delight us always seem like reminiscences of some previous life.”
Nothing happened, however, at the moment. The Archduke passed by without speaking—too shy to speak, perhaps, though that, in the light of the letter which we have just read, is not very easy to believe; but he did not forget. To quote the same narrator:—
“His thoughts came back, again and again, to the girl who had appeared to him in such poetical circumstances, in an Autumn twilight. He wanted to know who she was; and having learnt that her home was in Vienna, where she lived with her parents, and that her name was Milly Stübel, and that she was one of the artistes employed at the Opera, he sought and found an opportunity of meeting her again. Every time that he met her, it was a fresh pleasure to him to remark the originality and the attractive complexity of her gifted nature. Soon they were passing long hours in each other’s society; and it was the unspeakable joy of musical harmony which attached him, for ever more, to Milly; for music is far more eloquent than words.”
One has no difficulty in believing it; for that is what the Habsburgs are like. One after another, they find their way to the common lot by taking a perfectly sincere and simple interest in the ordinary occupations and amusements of ordinary people. Sometimes those interests are domestic, as in the case of the Archduke Charles Ferdinand, who is said to have proposed marriage in the kitchen; they sometimes are artistic, as in the case of Princess Louisa of Tuscany, who was at the piano when she first spoke of love to Signor Toselli. So that it was quite in conformity with the family traits that the Archduke John Salvator should forget his rank, in order to talk musical criticism with the ballet-girl; and it was equally in accordance with the family traits that the talk should soon become affectionately intimate.
They talked of marriage: to the Austrian ballet-girl, as to the English lady, the Archduke spoke of his ability to earn a competence by the sweat of his brow—not, this time, as a teacher of languages or a keeper of wild beasts, but as a skipper in the merchant service. In a sense it was idle talk, for he had money enough in the bank to keep both himself and a wife in comfort; but he wanted the common lot, and labour, as well as matrimony, was a part of it. Nor was he making an empty boast; for he had passed the tests, and held a master mariner’s certificate. That was the condition of things with him when, not long after the Meyerling tragedy, he had his final quarrel with Francis Joseph.
The ultimate grounds and the immediate occasion of that quarrel remain uncertain. From Countess Marie Larisch’s narrative one would gather that, whatever the proximate cause may have been, the final cause was the Hungarian plot. Princess Louisa, on the other hand, has a story that Francis Joseph ordered him to apologise for language which he had used to the Archduke Albert, and that he refused to do so. Both stories may be true; and the Archduke’s determination to marry an opera nymph may also have been a contributory cause of disagreement. The actual scene is described by Princess Louisa, who may be supposed to have had her information from the Archduke himself:—
“Uncle John” (she tells us) “said in his bold way that he would leave the army and the Court rather than be dictated to, and he concluded by declaring that he did not care in the least whether he was a member of the Imperial House. A storm followed this rank apostasy, and my uncle, in a fit of ungovernable rage, tore off his Order of the Golden Fleece, and flung it at the Emperor.”
The Emperor, as may be supposed, was not melted, but rather hardened, by that appeal to his feelings; so that, when the Archduke presently announced his desire to resign his rank and titles, take the name of “John Orth,” and leave Austria, Francis Joseph replied that he might take any name he chose, and go where he liked, but that, if he ever attempted to return, he would find that the Austrian police had orders to arrest him as soon as he crossed the frontier. Those were the circumstances in which he departed; and Milly Stübel departed with him. He could not marry her in Austria, but he had promised to marry her in London.