The life of the emperor Francis Joseph

by Francis Henry Gribble

CHAPTER XXIV

John Orth—Had he been plotting with Rudolph?—Indirect confirmation of story told by Countess Marie Larisch—Did John Orth really marry Milly Stübel—Failure to find the proofs of the marriage—John Orth’s letters written on the eve of his departure for America—Disappearance of his ship off Cape Horn—Is John Orth really dead—Examination of the reasons for believing that he is still alive.

We will now definitely call John of Tuscany John Orth; but a cloud of uncertainty overhangs both his assumption of that name and his subsequent adventures. Ostensibly he assumed the name, and shook the dust of Austria off his feet, to please himself; but there are not wanting those who declare that, if he had not resigned his rank, he would have been deprived of it, and that he only banished himself because the Emperor had threatened to banish him.

The narrative of Princess Louisa does not help us much. Princess Louisa only knows what her uncle told her, and he evidently told her very little. It is reasonable to trust her for the passionate scene in Francis Joseph’s cabinet; but that is all. She was only a girl of twenty when she heard of it, and there was no reason why the hidden causes of the scene should be confided to her. Nor does one get much light from Countess Marie Larisch’s story of the plot to seize the throne of Hungary, if one accepts her version of that story; for, if all the evidence relating to that plot was contained in the mysterious steel casket, then Francis Joseph would have known nothing of it, and John Orth would have had nothing to fear when once the casket was in his hands.

But was all the evidence of that plot contained in that steel casket? Had not a portion of it found its way, by some means or other, into the hands of the Austrian secret police? That is our problem; and it will be useful to turn back to the half-forgotten gossip of the time, and see if we can find in it any indications that Countess Marie Larisch’s “revelation” has, at least, “something in it.”

We can. It was assumed by Countess Marie’s reviewers, when her book appeared, that her story connecting John Orth’s departure with the Meyerling tragedy was, whether true or not, at all events quite new. But that assumption was erroneous. Countess Marie was only putting the dots on the i’s—whether she put the right dots on the right i’s or not—of a contemporaneous rumour. One may find the rumour in a work entitled The Private Life of Two Emperors—William II. of Germany and Francis Joseph of Austria—published in the United States, nine years ago, and written, as the publisher’s note states, as far back at 1899. It possesses no sort of authority; one dares not go to it for “inside information”; but it does reflect—for what it is worth—the gossip of the hour. This is what the writer says:—

“There is, it may be added also, a story as to the Archduke’s disappearance which I have never yet seen in print. It connects his exile and his disappearance from the ranks of the members of the Imperial family of Austria with the tragedy of Meyerling and the death of Crown Prince Rudolph. It is difficult to account for the origin thereof, except for the fact which I have just mentioned that the two Archdukes had already once quarrelled, and had been prevented from fighting a duel only by the intervention of the Emperor. There could, therefore, be no longer any love lost between them. Moreover, Archduke Rudolph died at Meyerling in the early part of 1889; Archduke John left Austria and relinquished his military and imperial dignities during that same year, after having been suspended from his divisional command just about the time of the tragedy at Meyerling.”

What is important here is the rumour itself; the inferences drawn from it by the writer do not matter. The suggestion that John Orth was directly concerned with Rudolph’s death is obviously no more than a conjectural explanation of the rumour. How, people were evidently asking themselves, could John Orth’s departure be associated with Rudolph’s death except on the assumption that he had done, or procured, a deed of violence? Countess Marie’s story at least accounts for the association without invoking that hypothesis; and it also accounts for the quarrel between the two Archdukes. It was a quarrel, according to her, between conspirators—the one eager to press forward, and the other frightened into wishing to hang back; and though one gathers from one page of Countess Marie’s book that the secret of the conspiracy was locked up in the steel casket, one reads on another page that the Ministers had an inkling of it. That fact transpires in her account of her interview with Count Julius Andrassy:

“Count Andrassy” (she writes) “said plainly that something beyond a love drama was responsible for the tragedy; the Archduke John corroborated this statement, and the affair of the steel box makes me absolutely certain of it.”

Count Andrassy, that is to say, knew something, but did not choose to tell Countess Marie how much he knew. What was known to him was presumably known to the Emperor too; and their joint knowledge may have been enough to induce them to drive John Orth into exile with menaces. Still, though the conjecture is plausible, certainty is unattainable.

Nor is certainty attainable with regard to John Orth’s alleged marriage to the ballet-girl, Milly Stübel. The stock statement is to the effect that he married her in London; but none of those who make the statement have seen the “marriage lines.” They have been sought for; but the search has been unavailing.[5] One suspects that a ceremony of some sort was performed somewhere—pour acquit de conscience—but that it was a ceremony without legal value. One only gets back to certainty when one comes to speak of John Orth’s voyage to the New World, whither he set sail, on his own ship, the Sainte-Marguerite, on March 26, 1890. But he had passed by way of Switzerland; and it was while he was in Switzerland that he and Francis Joseph exchanged their last communications. That story has been told, in the Berliner Tagblatt, by Marshal Czanadez, at that time attached to the Emperor’s military cabinet:—

[5] Mr. Eveleigh Nash, the publisher, assures the author that he has himself engaged in the investigation very carefully, but with purely negative results.

“John Orth” (Marshal Czanadez wrote) “had hardly left the Empire for Switzerland when the Emperor instructed me to follow him, to deliver a letter to him, and to induce him to return to Vienna. I fulfilled my mission; but I could not influence the Archduke. He told me that he wished to live on his private means in accordance with his tastes. He said that he had a capital sum of 70,000 florins, and proposed to lay it out to the best advantage. Seeing that he would not listen to my arguments, I took Francis Joseph’s letter from my pocket and handed it to him. He ran his eyes over it and turned pale. Trembling with emotion, he handed the letter back to me and pointed to a passage in which the Emperor told him that his renunciation of the title of Archduke was accepted, but that he must never set foot in Austria-Hungary again. My mission was terminated. I returned to Vienna. I told the Emperor its result, and informed him of the details of my conversation with the Archduke. The Emperor made no remark.”

It seems a little confused. The bearer of a letter forbidding John Orth to return to Austria can hardly have been instructed to try to persuade him to return there; so one scents inaccuracy. All that is established is that there were negotiations of some sort, even after John Orth had passed the frontier. We must make what we can of that imperfect information; and we must also make what we can—which is not much—of the letters in which John Orth himself bade his friends farewell. In a letter written to Herr Heinrich, on December 8, 1889, we find him protesting against constructions which have been placed upon his conduct:—

“I give you my word of honour” (he writes) “that my relations with our illustrious and benevolent sovereign have undergone no change. The impossibility of my return to the army must not, any more than my own resolution, be attributed to him....

“Francis Joseph’s behaviour in the matter has been that of a magnanimous, just, and noble monarch. I have received from the hands of M. Csanadez of the Military Chancellery, the letter granting my request; but that letter forbade me to return to my own country without special permission. Hard as I find that condition, I recognise that it is not an act of excessive or exaggerated severity. No dynasty can allow one of its members to live the life of a bourgeois in his own country without his Emperor’s leave.

“What really troubled me was the order intimated to me by the order of the Minister of the Imperial Household to get myself naturalised in Switzerland. What a cruel dilemma was that! On the one hand I should have liked to demonstrate my gratitude and affection to the Emperor by acting in accordance with his wishes. On the other hand I was anxious to continue to be his subject, partly on account of my admiration for his august person, and partly on account of my passionate desire to continue to be a citizen of my beloved fatherland. I made an appeal, therefore, to the Emperor’s gracious kindness; and I have been a whole month without a reply letting me know whether I am or am not to be permitted to be an Austrian.”

The letter, which was published, was obviously written for publication. It was a manifesto rather than a confidence—designed to tell Austria, not the truth, but what John Orth wished to be accepted as the truth. We seem to see the writer laying his hand upon his heart and bowing, as he makes his exit speech. He goes on to speak of his intention to obtain a master mariner’s certificate; and then he becomes poetically vague:—

“My longings and my dreams will doubtless disappear among the ocean waves: not so the ideal which I cherish in my heart. Shall I be happy? I do not know; but at least I am satisfied that I have no reason to blush for anything that I have done. What will become of me if I do adopt the Swiss nationality? That, too, I do not know. The time for idle and empty dreams is past....

“... Need I add that, even if I have to become Swiss, my heart and soul will continue to be entirely Austrian?

“Perhaps my words are the outcome of morbid excitement. However that may be, I hide my thoughts from no one, and cling to the hope that, some day, I shall be able to seal my fidelity to my country by my actions. In truth, my impatience to do so is great—especially great in view of the impossibility of bringing my plans to realisation.”

There are also a few later letters. In one of them, written on the eve of departure, we read:—

“To-day I bid farewell to Europe—the quarter of the globe in which the first years of my life have been passed; and I am now beginning to realise, in the shadow of my old flag, my project of a voyage to the New World. The tug which awaits me will slowly and silently tow my ship out to sea, without any firing of salutes. And so we shall float down the Thames—the golden Thames; and, in a few hours’ time, we shall be unfurling our sails in the midst of fog and rain.”

The last letter is written after the arrival in South America:—

“Once away from Vienna, I find everything peaceful. My loyalty to my fatherland cannot be shaken. Across the wide waters I waft it a salute.”

That is the final gesture; and one can get little out of it beyond the fact that John Orth was a true Habsburg, who must needs strike an attitude. His exit speeches to Herr Heinrich are, mutatis mutandis, in the same tone as his exit speeches to Countess Marie Larisch and Princess Louisa. We have already given a portion of his farewell speech to the latter; and the rest of it may be quoted here:—

“My uncle looked at us tenderly, for we were on the verge of tears at the idea of losing our kind and brilliant kinsman, and he then said, with calm gravity: ‘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.

“‘I wish, Louisa and Leopold, that you could come with me, for we three should live the life best suited to us. It cannot be, however, and our ways must part here. You are both, like myself, individualities, and, like me, you will work out your destinies. But we shall become forces that will eventually be felt.’”

One suspects here, of course, that Princess Louisa’s self-consciousness has impaired the exactitude of her recollections. She wants us to believe that the seal of mystery was imprinted, at an early age, on her own brow, and that the Man of Mystery among the Habsburgs recognised her, even in her childhood, as a kindred spirit. Perhaps he did, and perhaps he did not—it matters very little. What really matters is the impression which John Orth left behind him—the impression of a man with dark secrets and deep designs, which he hinted at but would not communicate; one who meant to evaporate like a subtle essence—to be materialised again when there once more was work for him to do in the flesh. That was how he impressed Countess Marie Larisch, when he kissed her hand and left her standing alone on that dark night in the Ring:—

“I watched John of Tuscany as he passed into the fog and disappeared in the gloom of the night. And, when I read later that he had been drowned at sea, I thought of that evening in Vienna when he bade me farewell. 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.”

But what became of him?

The actual known facts are very few. The Sainte-Marguerite, navigated, not, as Princess Louisa says, by John Orth, but by Captain Sodich, set sail on March 26, 1890, and duly reached La Plata. There she took a fresh crew, and started, with John Orth himself in command and Milly Stübel on board, on a voyage to Valparaiso. Furious gales were raging round the Horn at the time of her passage; and she never reached her destination. The presumption that she had gone down, with her captain and all hands, was very strong; but still hope was not abandoned. There was just a chance that she might have been wrecked on one of the desolate islands off the coast of Chili—islands which have no harbours and no means of communication with the rest of the world. The thing had happened to other ships, and it was just possible that it might have happened to the Sainte-Marguerite. So Don Agostino Aroyo, Minister of the Argentine Republic at Vienna, argued; and Francis Joseph sent an Austrian cruiser to search the coast, in accordance with his suggestions. But without result. The cruiser searched diligently, and found nothing. The sea guarded its secret, and the mystery was as deep as ever.

And then legend got to work, and refused to be stifled, alleging that John Orth was still alive.

There were those who declared that the Sainte-Marguerite had not been lost at sea, but had been given another name, and had either been marooned or entered another port than that for which she was cleared; but that is quite incredible, if not materially impossible. The ship could hardly have been marooned anywhere where she would not, by this time, have been found; and one can imagine no means whereby the silence of the survivors could have been secured. Moreover, the police of the seas and the ports does its work very effectively; and every sailor man is a potential detective who boasts that he can recognise any ship known to him, without needing to read the name painted on her stern. This first theory, therefore, will not by any means hold water; and it was quickly supplanted by the second theory that, though the Sainte-Marguerite was lost, with all hands, John Orth was not on board of her. That is the theory to which Princess Louisa adheres:—

“The chief officer of this vessel” (she writes) “came to Salzburg expressly to see papa, and this man told me he was positive John Orth was alive, and had never gone to Valparaiso. He described how, as the old crew stood watching the Margherita disappear into the evening mists, the person who stood on the bridge, enveloped in a great-coat, and muffled to the eyes, was NOT John Orth, but some one impersonating him. The crew in question returned to Trieste, and one and all believed the evidence of their own eyes at La Plata, and refused to put any credence in the report that their captain had been drowned at sea.”

THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF TUSCANY

(John Orth.)

That was the starting-point of the legend; and it was soon embroidered, as such legends always are. From this, that, and the other source came reports that this, that, and the other traveller had met John Orth and recognised him. One may as well make out a list of these stories:—

1. A visitor to a Spanish convent recognised John Orth there in the garb of a monk.

2. A French immigrant to the Argentine Republic, returning to France in 1893, declared that he had met John Orth at Buenos Ayres, and again at Rio Quarto.

3. A citizen of Trieste claimed to have met John Orth at Buenos Ayres in 1894.

4. An explorer of the Polar regions related that he had encountered John Orth in the midst of the eternal snow and ice, carrying a pocket-book on which the arms of the House of Habsburg were emblazoned in gold.

5. An explorer of the Chaco discovered John Orth, living in a lonely hut, sixteen miles from the nearest house, in the disputed territory close to the Chilian frontier. The man, who spoke German, called himself Frederick Otten; but the traveller was not to be deceived by his false name.

Some of these stories are more plausible than others; and the one of them which has stuck in the minds of men is that which identifies John Orth with Frederick Otten, or, as some versions of the story style him, Baron Ott. But another story, never before printed, may be added here. A gentleman who spoke English fluently with a German accent, was in England a little while ago, attended by a well-known London solicitor, and prepared to negotiate with publishers. The solicitor invited Mr. Eveleigh Nash to meet him; and he dropped the hint which gave the opening for overtures, by saying something about “my niece.” “Then you,” said Mr. Nash, “must be the Archduke John of Tuscany.” “I am,” replied the mysterious stranger; and then the conversation turned on literary matters. “I can’t write my life under my own name,” said the stranger, “but if you want reminiscences of the House of Habsburg, I can provide you with plenty of them.”

There, for the moment, the matter was left; but presently there was a sequel. Information was received that the same traveller had also visited Paris, and, there also, had been invited to a little dinner in a restaurant; but, in Paris, the inquiry into his representations was pursued more carefully. Princess Louise of Saxe-Coburg, who was then in Paris, and who had known John of Tuscany well, consented to come to the restaurant, and look at the stranger, without making herself known to him. He did not recognise her, and she did not recognise him. “That man,” she said, “is no more John of Tuscany than I am”; and when Mr. Nash subsequently tried to get into communication with his mysterious acquaintance at the address which had been given to him, his letter was returned to him.

So that that identification falls to the ground; and, indeed, the plausibility of the most plausible of the identifications weighs but little in the balance when set against the difficulty of vanishing, as John Orth is supposed to have vanished, from human ken. What Jabez Balfour failed to do, in the same part of the world, with considerably stronger motives for doing it, John Orth is not in the least likely to have done. Nor need his melodramatic exit speeches—if he really delivered them—influence our judgment in the matter; for there is nothing in a determination to “die without dying” which can avail to save a sailor from the perils of the sea.

Nor is anything proved by the fact that John Orth’s mother, believing one or other of the stories, suddenly ceased to wear mourning for her son. Her case, in that respect, was only like that of the mother of Sir Roger Tichborne; and, like the mother of Sir Roger Tichborne, she gave large sums of money to an impostor who claimed to be her son. So we may take it as proved beyond all reasonable doubt that John Orth is really and truly dead; and the law courts recently took that view, and gave leave to presume his death, to the advantage of his heirs. His death is the second of the major tragedies of Francis Joseph’s reign. The assassination of the Empress was to be the third.