CHAPTER XXXI
The romantic Quadruple Alliance—The jarring notes—Princess Louisa’s objections to her brother’s companion Fräulein Adamovics—The sentimental life of the Archduke Leopold—He becomes “Herr Wulfling,” and marries Fräulein Adamovics—Herr and Frau Wulfling run wild in woods—Herr Wulfling divorces his wife and marries again—His confidences to Signor Toselli—Princess Louisa’s conception of the Simple Life—Her manners shock the Swiss—She dismisses M. Giron—Her marriage to Signor Toselli.
There were wheels within wheels; and the members of the Romantic Quadruple Alliance were not absolutely united. They could hold together in the presence of alarums and excursions; but intimacy and reflection discovered weak points in the combination. The dissidence was not quite so sudden or pronounced as in the case of those Balkan States which temporarily made common cause against Turkey; but lines of cleavage were nevertheless soon revealed, impairing the solidity of the entente, and introducing an appearance of comedy, not to say farce, into what should have been a drama of sustained and purely serious interest.
The first jarring note was struck when Princess Louisa made the acquaintance of Wilhelmina Adamovics. The ex-actress ran into the bedroom of the ex-Archduchess at Zurich, bursting with affection, and eager to take a new sister to her arms; but the ex-Archduchess was not so democratic as all that. Though she had bicycled with the dentist and made assignations with the tutor, she could not forget that she was a Habsburg, but retained enough family pride to feel that it should have been left to her to take the initiative in emotional demonstration. “The newcomer,” she tells us, “was obviously not of my world”; and she continues:—
“I was taken aback. I had not expected this, and I did not want it. I knew, indeed, that Leopold had fallen in love with a beautiful girl of the people, but it never crossed my mind that he intended to marry her, and I felt instinctively that her arrival in our midst would upset all our plans.
“I tried, however, to disguise my annoyance, and to put some warmth into my greeting, but she was quite impossible, and I subsequently discovered that she had not even been trained in the rudiments of the art of behaving at table.”
It was a bad beginning; and it was not made any better by the representations of the Vienna newspapers that “the flight of the Crown Princess was exclusively due to her brother Leopold’s influence.” Their cue seems to have been to depreciate Leopold; and this is the place in which to reproduce the character sketch of him printed in the Neue Freie Presse:—
“Archduke Leopold Ferdinand” (we there read) “is a very intelligent man, but somewhat eccentric, whimsical in a high degree, and difficult to manage. A prominent feature of his character is irony and sarcasm. He has in this way given much displeasure to officers of high rank, and this is the only reason why, in spite of his jovial and agreeable manner, he has made no friends in the army. While at Iglau he was constantly in conflict with the commander of the regiment. Thus, one day he went out riding disguised as a lady, in company with another officer, and was seen and recognised by his commanding officer, who, of course, took him to task. He hates etiquette, loves free and easy manners, and has always had little intercourse with the aristocracy, preferring lively young people of the middle class.”
The free-and-easiness of the Archduke’s manners had, indeed, manifested itself in the presence of Francis Joseph himself, on the day on which he was summoned to the Emperor’s presence to be told that his way of life was dissolute and indecorous. He did not, like John Orth, pelt the Emperor with the insignia of his Orders; but he found another means, not less effective, of carrying the war into the enemy’s camp, bowing politely and responding:
“I hear what you say, sir, but I fail to see why I should pay any attention to it. If there is a mote in my eye, there is a beam in yours. When you speak of such matters as these, I do not regard you as the Emperor of Austria—I merely regard you as Herr Schratt.”
And so saying, he ceremoniously bowed himself out before Francis Joseph could lay his finger on the electric button which would have summoned the secret police.
Thus, by that tu quoque, he justified his own preference for “lively young people of the middle-class”; but it nevertheless seems that, in Switzerland, the particular liveliness of Fräulein Adamovics, after jarring from the first upon his sister’s taste, came eventually to jar upon his own. It transpired in the course of time—in the course of a very short time, in fact—that the tastes, manners, and customs of Fräulein Adamovics deviated from the healthy norm no less than those of the more eccentric of the Habsburgs, albeit in a different direction. Her passion for the simple life and the return to nature lured her on to proceedings hardly compatible with sanity. The goal of self-realisation, it seemed to her, could only be attained if men and women divested themselves of their clothing, and climbed trees in order to crack nuts.
A strange doctrine truly, and one to be condemned by those pragmatists who bid us test every doctrine by the touchstone question: “Will it work?” It found its condemnation in this case, when “Herr Wulfling” began to translate theory into practice. After running wild in woods for a season, he was persuaded by the jeers of a passer-by to visit a barber’s shop; and the sudden sight which he got of himself in the barber’s mirror—the spectacle of a hirsute savage suggesting a Wild Man from Borneo—decided him to return to civilisation by the shortest cut available. He ran to the nearest slop-shop, put himself into a reach-me-down check-suit, engaged rooms in a pension, and shortly afterwards divorced the wife who had lured him into his amazing courses, and sought another wife of a more commonplace kind.
His second wife was a Swiss lady—Fräulein Ritter—and his union to her appears to have been more fortunate. He acquired the rights of citizenship in the Canton of Zug; and he presently obtained damages in a Swiss Court of Law against a journalist, who circulated the report that he had always lived, and was still living, a disorderly life, and had refused to pay his rates. The dispute about the rates was only a dispute about an assessment; and the tribunal endorsed counsel’s favourable estimate of Herr Wulfling’s personal worth. It is interesting to compare that estimate with the depreciatory paragraph quoted from the Neue Freie Presse; and we may borrow the report of the Indépendance Belge:—
“In Austria” (we there read) “M. Leopold Wulfling was indifferent to the attractions of fashionable life, but enjoyed himself in middle-class society. He was understood to be one of the most cultivated members of the archducal house. He speaks and writes ten or a dozen languages correctly, and has a knowledge of mathematics and astronomy which would qualify him to occupy a professorial chair in any University in the world. He is also an experienced navigator of the seas. At Salzburg, where he lived for a long time, he became very popular. His superiors considered him too considerate to the soldiers serving under his orders. His relations with his father continued to be extremely cordial even after he had retired from the army. It is absolutely untrue to say that he has been compelled to abandon the profession of arms; but the resignation of his titles involved the resignation of his commission. Note that of all his Orders he has kept only the modest Cross of Merit bestowed upon the young Archduke by the Emperor himself for saving two men from drowning.”
Decidedly the Archduke Leopold had the beau rôle on that occasion. Not only did he leave the Swiss Court without a stain on his character, but his calumniator narrowly escaped imprisonment for defamation, and had to pay a heavy fine. It was at about this date that Signor Toselli made his acquaintance, and was inspired to the following pen portrait of the Archduke:—
“He was a tall, fine man, fair, stout, loud-voiced, and genial. He lived in an English boarding-house, where he did exactly as he liked. He trailed about most of the day in carpet slippers.”
Some may think that that was carrying liberty to the verge of licence; but it is perhaps not less natural for an Archduke unwittingly to infringe the etiquette of boarding-houses than for a parvenu to infringe the etiquette of Courts. In Austria, it has been said, the aristocracy dare not ask the professors to dinner for fear lest, if they were worldly enough to dress for the banquet, they should wear green ties with their dress clothes. Herr Wulfling, at any rate, spoke his mind about Courts and Kings—and also about his sister:—
“Court life is stupid, dull, and wretched. Everything about it is insufferable. I cannot breathe at Court. A free man has the world at his feet, but a Prince or King is the puppet of his surroundings.”
And also, on another occasion:—
“Kings are just like other men. Not one in a hundred is worth a cent; perhaps even that is an exaggerated estimate. As for my sister, she is a crazy creature. At her age she might surely keep out of mischief.”
That was rather an unkind criticism, especially so soon after he and Princess Louisa had made the plunge into the simple life together; but it appears that, though Princess Louisa had, like her brother, the courage of her convictions, she was more a creature of impulse, more inclined to pose, and less consistent in her view of the obligations of simplicity. Half the journalists of Europe had assembled at Geneva, as we have seen, to give her a gallery to play to; and she played to that gallery like an operatic star, taking the air with M. Giron daily, amid the applause of the collected populace, and thereby somewhat shocking the opinion of the rigid City of Calvin. This is how, speaking to the wife of an artist who called on her, she manifested her joy in her emancipation:—
“What a happy woman you must be to be married to an artist who has a high standard, and tries to make his life square with it! Then you are free to do as you please, to dress as you like, to wear out your clothes. I have often to dress six times a day.”
Perhaps. But Princess Louisa had engaged the whole of the first floor of the Hotel d’Angleterre for herself and her suite; and it was remarked that this proceeding seemed to reflect an Archduchess’s rather than an ascetic’s conception of simplicity. It was remarked, too, that her literary tastes, in so far as these could be inferred from the books which she borrowed from the Geneva libraries, appeared to be of a decadent modernity. Her favourite authors were discovered to be Gérard de Nerval and Baudelaire: excellent authors, indeed, but not authors whose message is for the simple and unsophisticated.
But let that pass: this work is not the life of Princess Louisa of Tuscany. Nor need we dwell upon the withdrawal of M. Giron from the Princess’s entourage, or upon her own nervous breakdown and consequent retreat into a maison de santé. Very possibly the two events had some connection with each other; but it does not matter. Nor does the behaviour of M. Giron himself matter, though it is impossible not to commend him, before one dismisses him, for the chivalry with which he has kept silence. At the height of the romantic battle, indeed, he was no more discreet than the rest, and could hardly be expected to be so. He was very young; and he evidently believed that great things had happened, and that still greater things were about to happen. If he and Princess Louisa were going to defy the Habsburg system by living happily together ever afterwards, there was no reason why their gestures should not be as defiant as their actions; but that, as it turned out, was not to be.
Once more there were wheels within wheels; once more there was an interposition of some sort which threw the machinery out of gear. There is some reason to believe that the interposition was of a pecuniary character, though none for believing that M. Giron himself was “bought off.” But the day nevertheless came when M. Giron discovered that his mission was terminated. As Princess Louisa puts it:—
“M. Giron did not remain long in Switzerland. My reputation being thoroughly compromised by his presence, my object was achieved, and he therefore returned to Brussels.”
It is rather a cold-blooded way of putting it. M. Giron may well have felt that Princess Louisa was resuming as a woman all the rights which she had forfeited as an Archduchess. But he raised no public protest at the time, and he has raised none since, though the wealthy proprietors of sensational newspapers have often tempted him to do so. One need seek no other explanation than the fact that he was a gentleman, too chivalrous to bear malice if there was any to be borne, conscious that his chivalry had led him into mistaken courses, and only anxious that the world should forget his error. After all, how many private tutors of his tender age, however respectably connected, can lay their hands upon their hearts and vow that they, in his place, would have been irresponsive to the appeal of a fascinating Crown Princess?
But let that pass too; for our business is only with Princess Louisa, and with her only in so far as her case illustrates the failure of the Habsburg system, and the impulse of the family to revolt, as it were, against itself. No theory of her possessing a double dose of original sin can justly be invoked to account for her proceedings. The impulse to revolt was as physiologically sound in her case as in any of the others; but it was stirred in her too late. She was too radically affected to be saved by it. There is something pathetic in the picture of her efforts to recover her balance—so desperate, yet so unavailing.
In her restlessness, if in nothing else, she reminds one a little of the Empress Elizabeth. One sees her, as one sees the Empress, driven continually from place to place, seeking she knows not exactly what, but always failing to find it; but one does not see her, as one sees the Empress, guarding her secret like a delicate flame which must at all costs be sheltered from the wind. Her disposition is, rather, to expose the flame to all the winds which blow, in the hope that one or other of them may fan it to a blaze. For she is, after all, a Habsburg; and that is how the Habsburgs differ from the Wittelsbachs. The contrast has been pointed out already; but the point may be made again—in French, because there is no exact equivalent in English for the French phrases. The typical Wittelsbach, sane or insane, is tout en dedans; the typical Habsburg, conventional or unconventional, is tout en dehors.
Princess Louisa’s career exemplified the distinction when she bicycled in the Park with the dentist, and when she summoned M. Giron to Switzerland to compromise her. A further illustration of it was furnished when she affianced herself to that promising young pianist, Signor Toselli. The contrast leaps to the eyes in Signor Toselli’s report of the first compliments which she paid him:—
“I love the society of artists. Their views are so noble and so generous. They are far above the petty prejudices of other men. Their conversation is stimulating and inspiring. You cannot imagine how badly they are treated at the Court of Dresden. They are simply paid their fee and dismissed.”
Even M. Paderewski, the Princess added, would have been simply paid his fee and dismissed, if she had not herself run forward, with tears in her eyes, and clasped him by the hand.
The Wittelsbachs do not talk like that, but, entertaining similar sentiments, act on them more quietly, and more as a matter of course. Nor does one hear of the Wittelsbachs making their declarations of love with that dramatic directness with which, if one may trust Signor Toselli, who has not M. Giron’s instinct for reticence, Princess Louisa made hers. One does not picture a Wittelsbach putting to a comparative stranger the straight questions: “Have you ever loved?... Tell me, do you feel capable of love?” Nor could one readily credit a Wittelsbach with the naïve vanity of the following announcement of artistic aims and gifts:—
“I shall write the words to your music. I feel a hitherto unused talent stirring within me. I can also do sculpture.”
What wonder if Signor Toselli, being only twenty-four, was persuaded by such exclamations that all the fairy-tales were coming true? And that though he was warned.
“Do you really know the Crown Princess of Saxony, sir?” said Countess Fugger to him. “Do you realise her character and the life she has led? Rather than commit such folly I would advise you to go into the garden, this very instant, and put a bullet through your brain.”
But the warning fell upon deaf ears; and it is impossible to feel surprise at its having done so—not only because a child was about to be born, but also for a good many other reasons. Rank does not cease to dazzle because the high-born condescend, but often dazzles all the more effectively, by causing the lowly-born to feel at ease in their preferment, as well as proud of it. The chances of really romantic adventure, too, are rare in modern life; and a young musician is even less likely than most other young men to turn his back on them in a calculating spirit of sober self-restraint. The blaze of publicity is not a thing from which the conditions of his calling have taught him to shrink.
Signor Toselli did not shrink from it, and doubtless he enjoyed his hour of rapture. He and his bride changed their names with the rapidity of genius. At the office of the London Registrar, they were, of course, Signor Toselli and Princess Louisa of Tuscany; but at the Hotel Cecil they were Signor and Signora San Marcellino, and at the Norfolk Hotel they were M. and Mme. Dubois. When they started for their honeymoon, their railway carriage was besieged by reporters; and they may well have believed that the acclamations of the world’s Press saluted their definite entrance into the joys of an earthly Paradise.
But, if that was their belief, then they were mistaken in it. In Princess Louisa’s case, as we have said, the hour of revolt had struck too late. Her spiritual revolution was, in some respects, rather like the great French Revolution, which continued to proceed from excess to excess, and from extravagance to extravagance, long after its ostensible purpose had been achieved. She might be able to “do sculpture”; but there were certain other things, more important than sculpture, which she found it impossible to do. Above all, she could not settle down and keep her allegiance fixed. She had no sooner settled down in one place than she wanted to move on and settle down somewhere else. Like Little Joe, she was “allus a-moving on”; and the meaningless migrations were a weariness of the flesh to her husband, and a hindrance to his professional prospects. “You are killing the artist in me,” he said to the woman who had once assured him that artists were, of all men, the noblest and the worthiest to be loved.
Photo Dover Street Studios
PRINCESS LOUISA OF TUSCANY
(Ex-Crown Princess of Saxony).
After that there was estrangement, culminating in separation, but mitigated by collaboration in a comic opera—the plot of it based upon Princess Louisa’s recollection of certain incidents in her career as Crown Princess of Saxony. The proof is clear that, in her case—if not also in his—the passion for publicity has survived the passion for romance; but the end is not yet, and is not likely to prove of a significance which would warrant the suspension of the publication of this work until it occurs. Princess Louisa’s story has been an excursus, albeit a necessary one, seeing that it illustrates, even to the point of absurdity, the Habsburg habit of doing melodramatic things melodramatically, as if they felt conscious that, whether they sat on thrones or slid off them, they owed at once an entertainment and an object lesson to the admiring curiosity of the world.
And that, of course, is the reason why the Habsburgs have been at once so interesting and so troublesome to the Head of their House. When they have sinned, as he would account it—offended, at all events, against the ancient traditions of the House—they have not been contented to go out and sin quietly. They have, on the contrary, sinned, if not strongly, at least demonstratively, as if their business was everybody’s business, and it behoved both the Courts and the peoples to take note. And Francis Joseph, on his part, has not failed to take note, protesting, as it were, against Habsburg side-shows, and re-asserting those Habsburg principles which the rebels have rejected, with a vigour which sometimes reminds one of the last roar of a dying lion.
We must return to him, though, in truth, there remains but little to be said.