On the thirteenth of January, Maria left her parents’ home with many tears and embraces for the dear ones she was leaving behind. She had never seen her husband nor any member of his family. Both the land and people that were to be hers in future were strange to her—an uncertain fate, indeed, to look forward to! But she was young and light-hearted, full of hope and courage, and well equipped by nature for the trials that awaited her. Her brother Ludwig, with several Bavarian ladies and gentlemen, accompanied her on the journey, besides a Neapolitan court lady, Nina Rizzo, sent by the Queen of Naples to instruct her in her new duties. At Vienna a stay of several days was made, owing to news of King Ferdinand’s illness; but on the thirtieth of January the party resumed its way with the addition of the Empress Elizabeth, and on the following day reached Trieste, where they were met by the Duke of Serracapriola, sent by the King to welcome the future Queen of Naples. This pompous personage discharged his errand with such ceremonious solemnity that the simple, unaffected Bavarian princess knew not whether to laugh or cry.
On the first of February, at half-past one, the ceremony of delivering the bride into the hands of the Neapolitan envoy took place in the Governor’s palace. Across the centre of the great salon a silken cord had been stretched, representing the boundary line between Bavaria and Naples. Beside this were placed a table, covered with red velvet, and two gilded arm-chairs. The room had folding doors at either end, one of which was decorated with the colors of Naples and guarded by Neapolitan marines, while at the other, similarly adorned with Bavarian arms and banners, stood a band of the royal Bavarian retainers. The Neapolitan envoy, with two ladies of high rank who had come to act as escort to the Princess, were stationed on their side of the boundary line with the Admiral and officers of the ship that was to carry Maria Sophia and her suite to Naples, while the Duchess and her Bavarian escort entered through the other door and took their places. The two envoys then advanced from their respective positions to the silken cord, where they exchanged documents concerning the marriage. The Count von Rechburg addressed a few words of farewell to the youthful bride, who rose and extended her hand for her German attendants to kiss, after which the Count led her to the middle of the room and gave her into the hands of the Duke of Serracapriola, who humbly begged her to seat herself in the Neapolitan arm-chair while he delivered a short address of congratulation and welcome. This almost mediæval ceremony concluded, Maria left the salon through the door draped in Neapolitan colors and went directly on board the Fulminante, in the cabin of which the Empress Elizabeth and Prince Ludwig took an affecting farewell of their young sister. The greater part of her suite embarked on another vessel, the Tancredo, and an hour later both ships were steaming out of the harbor of Trieste.
Chapter V
The Neapolitan Royal Family
King Ferdinand the Second, the reigning Prince of Naples at this time, came of bad stock. The reign of his grandfather, Ferdinand the First of Naples and Fourth of the Two Sicilies, of whom King Frederick of Prussia once aptly remarked that he was more fit for a prison cell than a throne, had been one long scandal, and his son, Francis the First, followed faithfully in his father’s footsteps during his short reign (1825-1830). Ferdinand the Second had naturally a good mind, and at the time of his accession to the throne had roused great hopes by the military and financial reforms he introduced and by his wise plans for developing the resources of his impoverished kingdom. This did not last long, however, for he soon began to display the same despotic tendencies that had made his father and grandfather so abhorred by the people, and the older he grew the more marked these became.
The general movement toward liberty that shook Europe in the nineteenth century had not been without its effect, both in Naples and Sicily, as may easily be supposed, considering the harsh rule which the fiery southerners had been forced to endure so long. Ferdinand had succeeded in crushing one violent outbreak in 1848; but beneath the ashes the fire still smouldered, and the inward ferment was constantly increased by the extreme measures to which “Bomba,”[1] as the King was popularly called, resorted, to maintain and strengthen his position. He ruled with a despotism and intolerance that suggested the worst days of the Inquisition. The prisons were full of political “criminals,” whose only crime was the holding of liberal views, or the suspicion of doing so, and these victims were treated with such revolting cruelty as to rouse the horror of the civilized world. In spite of these things, however, Bomba was not without some good qualities. In private life he was both just and temperate, simple in his habits, a good husband and father. He was twice married. His first wife, to whom he was united two years after his accession to the throne, was the Princess Maria Christina of Sardinia—Italy’s “Queen Dagmar”—an angel of goodness and piety. The people called her Saint Christina even during her lifetime, and she was afterward canonized by the Church of Rome. Such a woman could not but exert a beneficial influence over her royal husband; but it was unfortunately of short duration, for she died in 1836, four years after her marriage, leaving a son two weeks old, the Crown Prince Francis Maria Leopold.
Ferdinand had no intention of remaining long a widower. He first wished to marry a daughter of King Louis Philippe of France, but Austria persuaded England to join in defeating this plan, which would have resulted in too powerful a union of the reigning Bourbon families. He then applied for the hand of an Austrian princess, and in 1837 was married to Maria Theresa, daughter of the Archduke Karl, who presented him with five sons and four daughters. In spite of her proud name and lofty lineage, the new Queen was a very ordinary person, though not without some homely virtues. Her horizon was bounded by her family and her household, in the duties of which she took an active part, even mending her children’s clothes with her own hands, it is said; and she seems to have been utterly lacking in the realization that a queen should have other and wider duties than those of a housekeeper. In simplicity of tastes she much resembled her husband, who was most frugal in his mode of living; but she sometimes went so far that even he was annoyed, and one day at dinner he remonstrated with her, saying: “Come, come, Ther! The simplest fare was served in the royal household. Macaroni was one of the principal articles of diet, and a favorite dish of the King’s was raw onions, which he peeled with his fingers, declaring that contact with a knife gave them an unpleasant flavor. The Queen, however, never liked Neapolitan cooking and always had some substantial German dishes prepared for herself. She could not speak Italian correctly, but learned only the Neapolitan dialect, which she pronounced in a most dreadful way, with her broad German accent. In short, Ferdinand’s second wife was as unpopular as his first had been popular. She made no effort to win the love of the people and her homely, plebeian ways were little to the taste of the gay Neapolitans, who adored glitter and display of any sort. The King’s favorite recreation was driving. He went out every afternoon, taking some of his family and usually holding the reins himself. The royal equipage was always accompanied by a mounted escort, while horsemen were stationed along the route the King was to take, to detain all chance travellers until he had passed by, not as a mark of respect, but as a measure of precaution. Exemplary as this royal pair may have been from the standpoint of a private citizen, as far as the education of their children was concerned they were certainly not successful. The teachers they chose were almost exclusively bigoted Jesuits. Ferdinand wished his sons to be taught Latin, French, civil and administrative law, but they received no military training of any kind. Even sports and physical exercises were excluded from their plan of education, nor were they permitted to travel or acquire any knowledge of foreign lands or peoples. Ferdinand’s own education had been most imperfect. He read little or nothing himself and wrote his orders, even those pertaining to important affairs of state, on any scrap of paper that came to hand, sometimes even in the Neapolitan dialect. He regarded all writers and literary men with contempt as an inferior and objectionable race of beings—a curious mixture of pride and prejudice which he also displayed toward people of other nations. He called the English, fishmongers, the French, barbers, the Russians, tallow-eaters, etc. Austrians were the only foreigners of whom he ever spoke with any respect, and that was on his wife’s account. In his younger days he had possessed a fair share of the Neapolitan humor, but it soon degenerated into bitterness and sarcasm. The following anecdote of him is characteristic. Some public festival was being held in the square in front of the palace and the King was standing on a balcony with the Crown Prince, then still a child. Gazing down on the crowds below and thinking perhaps of the high position to which he would one day be called, the boy turned suddenly to his father with the question: “What could a King do with all these people?”