COMMENTATOR: “To me the Empress said, ‘Let him marry whom he likes. I don’t mix myself up in Rudolph’s affairs.’”
AUTHOR: “That Rudolph met Marie Vetsera and her mother in London and called upon them several times is quite certain.”
COMMENTATOR: “Rudolph never met the Vetseras in London.”
AUTHOR: “Mademoiselle Ferenzy read to her from English, French, and Hungarian books.”
COMMENTATOR: “Mademoiselle Ferenzy could only read Hungarian.”
That may suffice; but any reader who has skipped the quotations should turn back to them. They may not matter very much in themselves—except to those to whom everything connected with royalty matters; but they do show us how Court history is sometimes written by journalists, and what is the historical value of the “revelations” of anonymous pretenders to the intimacy of Sovereigns. It was worth while, as the opportunity offered, to elaborate the demonstration, because the book containing the statements confuted—together with many others of an equally untrustworthy character—was for a time accepted as authoritative by the readers of two continents, and passed through several editions, on the assumption that it presented the authentic depositions of one who had really been behind the scenes.
The author was, in fact, so little behind the scenes—and so little qualified in other respects for her task—that she did not even know her way through the Almanach de Gotha, or remember elementary facts which anyone without special sources of information could easily ascertain. She places the scene of the imperial betrothal at Possenhofen, whereas it actually occurred at Ischl; and she states that the Empress was not of “royal” birth, whereas she was the granddaughter of a King. These things being so, it obviously is not to her writings that one must turn for details of the secret history of the estrangement between the Empress and the Emperor. That secret history, in so far as the Emperor’s flirtations are concerned, would not, in the opinion of those who are nearest to knowing it, make a very startling tale even if one could know it all.
It is not the rule, of course, for Emperors in the prime of life, estranged from their consorts, to deny themselves, on principle, all alternative attachments; and there is no reason to suppose that Francis Joseph did so. But his volatility was only comparative, and did not last long. The witnesses who attest the volatility also assure us that, taking his imperial grandeur as seriously as it deserved to be taken, he soon “settled down” and became, in the language of less exalted circles, “steady.” There was a certain Polish Countess; but that is too old and unimportant a story to be revived. The one lady whose name it is imperative to mention in connection with this branch of the subject is, of course, Frau Katti Schratt; and the circumstances in which the Emperor made Frau Schratt’s acquaintance shed an illuminating light upon the terms on which he and the Empress came to live.