The life of the emperor Francis Joseph

by Francis Henry Gribble

CHAPTER XXIX

The Archduke Francis Ferdinand—An invalid who delayed to marry—Report of his betrothal to the Archduchess Gabrielle—Announcement of his betrothal to Countess Sophie Chotek—Anecdotes of the courtship—Indignation of the Archduchess Gabrielle’s mother—Attitude of Francis Joseph—-He permits the marriage on condition that it shall be morganatic—Francis Ferdinand compelled to swear a solemn oath that he is marrying beneath him, and that his children will be unworthy to succeed him—Reasons for doubting whether he will eventually be bound by his oath.

Francis Ferdinand is the son of Francis Joseph’s brother, Charles Louis, and himself the brother of the Archduke Otto whose outrageous eccentricities we have reviewed, and of the Archduke Frederick Charles who wooed and won the homely daughter of the mathematical master, after helping her to shell the peas. He was not classed in his youth with the Archdukes who matter, for he was a delicate boy, and it seemed unlikely that he would live to grow up. Though he grew up, he remained delicate, and it was still assumed that he would die young. Hence the talk, which came to nothing, of marrying the Archduchess Elizabeth to Prince Eitel Fritz, and securing the succession to the throne to her by a fresh Pragmatic Sanction.

Whether we regard him as having been well or badly brought up depends upon our educational ideals. If it be good to be a Catholic, and better still to be a bigoted Catholic, then his upbringing was admirable. From his earliest years he was taught to walk, if not with God, at least with the Jesuits: the worthy son of a father of limited intelligence, who combined (if his portraits are to be trusted) the smug appearance of a sinister family solicitor with the fanaticism of an Ultramontane reactionary. There are those, to this day, who sum him up with the statement that he is “in the hands of the Jesuits”; but that is a phrase which may, in practice, mean anything or nothing. When princes and priests form a Holy Alliance, the wisdom of the serpent is quite as likely to be found in one partner of the combination as in the other. Their interests are seldom identical, and exploitation is a game at which two can play.

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THE ARCHDUKE FRANCIS FERDINAND.

It mattered little as long as Francis Ferdinand was expected to die, at any instant, of consumption; but he did not die of that disease, and perhaps he never really had it. He wintered in warm climates; he took cod liver oil; he travelled. Treatment and medicine produced the desired effect. Francis Ferdinand became as well able as any of his relatives to take his place in public life, and had to be reckoned with. The question of finding a wife for him became urgent. There were plenty of Archduchesses available; why did he not choose one of them and beget an heir? That was what Francis Joseph wanted to know when he saw his nephew thirty-five or more, and still a bachelor. The resulting dialogues are said to have been rather heated.

Presently rumour began to whisper that Francis Joseph had got his way. It was observed that Francis Ferdinand paid frequent visits to the house of the Archduke Frederick and the Archduchess Isabella at Presburg. They had charming daughters—the Archduchess Gabrielle was particularly charming. Here, it was felt, well within the Habsburg ring-fence, was the opportunity of an ideal betrothal; and here, at any rate, was the journalist’s opportunity for the intelligent anticipation of events before they occurred. Various newspapers, though not the official ones, grasped that opportunity and announced the betrothal. Official confirmation, they did not doubt, would come later, enabling them to boast: “I told you so.” But those readers of the newspapers who had been admitted to the Archduchess Isabella’s family circle shook their heads. They had seen what they had seen, and they anticipated quite other eventualities.

The Archduchess Isabella had a lady-in-waiting—Countess Sophie Chotek: a member of a Bohemian family, which, though old, was poor, and not of the highest order of nobility. Her father had held a governorship in Bohemia; her brother was a provincial official of moderate, but not excessive, dignity. But Francis Ferdinand, while charmingly polite to the Archduchess Gabrielle, was more often to be seen sitting in cosy corners with Countess Sophie Chotek. Often and often he sat a whole evening with her in a cosy corner, talking gloomily about his health, and complaining of the rigorous prescriptions of the doctors. Cod-liver oil, he said, was horrid stuff. It did him no good; he should stop taking it.

And Countess Sophie Chotek reasoned and pleaded with him, as womanly women do. Of course, cod-liver oil was good for him—he mustn’t be silly, and pretend that he knew better than the doctors; a peppermint lozenge would take away the taste. Anyhow, take it he really must, not only for his own sake, but for the sake of those to whom his life was precious.

“For my sake—to please me,” she concluded coaxingly; and Francis Ferdinand promised, and found that the medicine did work the promised miracle. He got better and better, until he was quite well; and there was joy in the House of Habsburg, and all the Archdukes and Archduchesses were grateful to Countess Sophie Chotek. It delighted the Archduchess Isabella in particular to see that her lady-in-waiting had such a good influence over the heir-apparent, and had succeeded, after everyone else had failed, in modifying his attitude towards his medicine. It did not occur to her that cod-liver oil was a potion which could operate as a love philtre, or that the conversations conducted in the cosy corners might have run on from cod-liver oil to other and more intimate themes.

But so it was; and while the Archduchess Isabella was giving Countess Sophie Chotek great credit for her tact, Countess Sophie Chotek was, in truth, displaying even more tact than the Archduchess was giving her credit for. For it came to this: that while the Archduke Francis Ferdinand was supposed to be nursing himself with a view to proposing marriage to the Archduchess’s daughter, he was, in fact, offering the devotion of a lifetime to the Archduchess’s lady-in-waiting. He was not only taking his oil three times a day for her sake; he was also declaring that, if it cured him, he should feel that he owed his life to her, and should show his gratitude by begging her to unite her life to his. It was understood between them that, when he did ask her to do this, she would not refuse; but meanwhile they kept their counsel until an accident disclosed their secret.

That secret came to light because Francis Ferdinand—or perhaps his valet—was a careless packer. He had been at Halbthurn on a visit to the Archduke Frederick; and when he had taken his departure, a servant came to the Archduchess Isabella and told her that he had left a quantity of jewellery behind him on the dressing-table. It had, of course, to be sent after him; and the Archduchess thought it better to see to the matter herself. She went to the bedroom, therefore, to collect and review the jewellery, and the inspection gave her a shock. She spoke to a servant:

“Tell Countess Chotek I desire to see her immediately.”

Countess Sophie Chotek obeyed her summons, and was greeted with:

“This calls for an explanation, miss. Pray, what have you to say for yourself?”

“This” being a medallion portrait of the Countess discovered among Francis Ferdinand’s personal effects.

One can imagine that the blow was a severe one to an Imperial mother who had cherished the hope of marrying her Imperial daughter to the heir-apparent. One can further easily believe that the explanation, if any, which was offered was unacceptable. One can almost fancy that one hears the climax of the dialogue:

“That will do. You need say nothing more; but you will leave my house at once. I give you half an hour in which to pack.”

Of course, Countess Sophie could not pack in half an hour, but had to go without her luggage; of course, too, the discovery of a portion of her secret entailed the revelation of the whole of it, though so far as the public were concerned it was only made known by degrees. First came the report that Francis Joseph and Francis Ferdinand were, for some unknown reason, not on speaking terms, and that the Court officials were snubbing Francis Ferdinand with educated insolence. Then came the rumour that Francis Ferdinand was going to renounce his archducal rights, marry Countess Sophie Chotek, leave Austria, and take up his residence with her at the Villa d’Este, at Rome. Finally came the official notification that the marriage would take place—that the Emperor had sanctioned it—but on terms.

And the nature of those terms?

This is not a Court history, and there is no need to gloss them over,—they shall be described with absolute frankness, and in plain language. The stipulation which the prestige of the House of Habsburg was held to require was this: that affronts should be publicly put on the bride before, during, and after the ceremony. The view officially taken of her may be said to be summed up in the carefully worded speech which the Emperor, gorgeously attired in his Field-Marshal’s uniform, read at a special meeting of his Privy Council. Every phrase in it should be noted with care:—

“I have invited the members of my House, my Privy Councillors, and my Ministers to attend to-day’s ceremony because the declaration which will be made is of the highest importance to the monarchy. Inspired by the wish always to provide as best I can for the members of my high House, and to give my nephew a new proof of special love, I have consented to his marriage with Countess Sophie Chotek. The Countess descends, it is true, from noble lineage; but her family is not one of those which, according to the customs of our House, we regard as our equals. Now, as only women from equal Houses can be regarded as equal in birth, this marriage must be regarded in the light of a morganatic marriage, and the children which, with God’s blessing, will spring from it cannot be given the rights of members of the Imperial House. The Archduke will, therefore, to make this certain for all time, to-day take an oath to the effect that he recognises all this, that he recognises his marriage with Countess Chotek to be a morganatic one, that the consequences are that the marriage cannot be regarded as one between equals, and that the children springing from it can never be regarded as rightful children, entitled to the rights of members of our House. I beg the Minister of my Imperial House to read the oath which the Archduke will swear.”

The Emperor’s voice is said to have been “full of emotion” while he recited this solemn manifesto. One would like to attribute at least a little of the emotion to regret that his family pride required him to insult a woman who, far from doing him any harm, had saved his nephew’s life by coaxing him to obey his physicians; but it is difficult to picture Francis Joseph as melted to tenderness by the idyll of the cod-liver oil. In any case, his emotion, whatever it may have been, was not allowed to interfere with the ceremony, which was continued with an ecclesiastical pomp indicating that Francis Joseph does, indeed, at times, mistake himself for God and the Archdukes for archangels, who are failing to behave as such.

It was Francis Ferdinand’s turn. Bowing to the Emperor, he advanced to the table, on which stood a crucifix, laid his first and middle fingers on the Testament which was held up to him by the Archbishop of Vienna, and read the oath from a paper which he held in his left hand. This is the remarkable text of it:—

“I, Francis Ferdinand, by the grace of God, Archduke of Austria, swear to God the Almighty that I recognise the House Laws always, and, in the case of my marriage with Sophie, Countess Chotek, specially; that I accept the oath read to me, with all its clauses, and therefore recognise that my marriage with Sophie Chotek is a morganatic one; that the children which, with God’s blessing, may spring from this marriage, will not be equal in birth, and, according to the Pragmatic sanction, will not be entitled to succeed to the throne, either in Austria or in Hungary.”

The two speeches sound like the last lingering echoes of mediævalism; and Francis Joseph, in spite of the successive shocks which experience has given him, probably retains more mediæval ideas than any other contemporary ruler. The superiority of the Habsburgs to the rest of mankind—at all events, of Austrian mankind—is not, for him, a proposition which needs to be demonstrated; it is a law of thought. He does not argue about it, or expect others to argue about it, but finds it in his consciousness together with his conceptions of space and time. What others may do counts for nothing in comparison with what the Habsburgs are; and that though a simple-minded seeker after truth who should ask what they are, could be told little in reply except that they are the Habsburgs. Gold similarly is esteemed a nobler metal than iron, though it cannot be fashioned into such effective swords or ploughshares.

On that principle, therefore—the principle that to be is more than to do, and that the function of those who can do is to serve those who are—Francis Joseph took his stand: thoroughly believing in it—himself at once the worshipper and the worshipped; no more regarding his declaration of his own immeasurable superiority to other men as an insult to those to whom he declared himself superior than the judge so regards his admonition of the convicted prisoner in the dock. One can only insult one’s equals. Any day on which the Head of the House of Habsburg decides a point of precedence takes rank as a Judgment Day—a day on which there can be only one answer to the question: Shall not the Judge of All the Earth do right? It was a matter of course that the prelates of the State Church lent themselves to the doctrine; for that is what the prelates of a State Church are for.

So that it was a matter of course that Francis Ferdinand should be required to proclaim urbi et orbi that he was marrying beneath him; that the marriage should be condemned to be a hole-and-corner affair which even the bridegroom’s brothers did not attend; that the bride’s status should be left so undignified that it was not permissible to her to attend the opera with her husband, or to sit in the Imperial stand with him at the races. But though that was Francis Joseph’s official attitude as an Emperor and a Habsburg, he was also a man and a brother, capable of tolerance and condescension—increasingly capable of it as the years went by. Flexibility, good nature, weariness of the long struggle with the Zeit Geist—one does not know to which of these things to attribute the modification of his tone; but he has modified it. Francis Ferdinand has been taken back into favour and allowed to hold the highest offices suitable for him; and Countess Sophie Chotek has been promoted to be Duchess of Hohenberg. She does not yet rank with the Archduchesses, but she does take her place in the hierarchy immediately after them.

How will she rank eventually, after the inevitable day on which Francis Joseph is gathered to his fathers? That is a question which must soon, in the course of nature, present itself; and it would be a great mistake to suppose that it was settled, once and for all, when Francis Ferdinand stood before the crucifix and swore that his wife was, and that his children would be, inferior persons, unworthy to be related to him. It is not merely that “Jove laughs at lovers’ perjuries,” or that Francis Ferdinand’s heart rejects the Habsburg superstition to which we have seen him rendering lip service. One must also remember that knots of this kind can never be tied so tightly that no way of untying them can be found by adroit and willing hands.

No doubt the Archduke is a religious man who understands the nature of an oath; but he was “brought up by the Jesuits,” and one suspects that he has not been brought up by them for nothing. All Catholics are addicted to casuistry, and the Jesuits specialise in it; nor does one need any extra-ordinary shrewdness to divine the insidious questions which may be invoked as solvents of a situation which Francis Joseph believed himself to have made hard and fast. Let us set them forth in order:—

1. Granted that Francis Ferdinand had the right to swear away his own rights, had he any right to swear away the potential rights of persons still unborn?

2. Granted that Francis Ferdinand is personally bound by his oath, on what grounds can that oath fetter the freedom of action of the Hungarian and Austrian Parliaments?

3. Cannot the Pope, to whom God has given the power to loose and bind, free any man from any obligation, even though he has sworn by bell, book, and candle to bow to it?

4. Would it not be right and reasonable for the Pope to accord that dispensation to such a religious man as Francis Ferdinand? Would it not be to the interest of the Church that he should do so?

5. Is there any particular reason why the Austrian and Hungarian Parliaments should not petition him to take that course?

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THE DUCHESS OF HOHENBERG

(Wife of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand).

Upon the answers given to those questions, and not upon the text of the oath which Francis Ferdinand swore, the ultimate inheritance of the Empire will depend. They are questions to which, so far as logic goes, one answer is as good as another; which means that the answer actually given to them will be dictated by expediency and the wishes of the influential. Those who picture Francis Ferdinand dutifully abiding by his pledges because he is a religious man not only misjudge him, but misjudge religious people generally. There is always a Higher Law—the universe is full of Higher Laws. One can always appeal to them; and, if one is an Emperor, one may have the advantage of being judge in one’s own case. Francis Ferdinand will enjoy that advantage presently; and it remains to be seen what use he will make of it. The issue is not yet, though it cannot be long delayed.

Meanwhile, one may salute Francis Ferdinand respectfully as one who has fought a good fight, and has not been content with half successes. His wife is a clever woman who knows how to bide her time, and does not go out of her way to make unnecessary enemies. He himself has his party, which looks likely to be the party of the future. The blow which he has struck at the Habsburg system is the hardest blow which that system has yet sustained, because he has struck it with dignity and self-restraint, gratifying the instinctive Habsburg craving for the infusion of fresh blood without provoking any of those scandals which give the enemy occasion to blaspheme. If the Papacy was in earnest when it admonished the Habsburgs for their consanguineous unions, then he may fairly claim that the Pope is his ally in the battle.

One cannot say the same of the acts of rebellion which have to be reviewed next, though they too have served their purpose as object-lessons: crowning proofs to be cited in support of the thesis that the Habsburg system of in-breeding in order to develop an unique type of man and woman is a failure, and that nature, expelled with a pitchfork, is apt to return—an old friend with a new face, exaggerating even to the point of grotesqueness the normal man and woman’s passion for romance.