There has been a good deal of that sort of thing in Francis Joseph’s reign; and his most popular portraits are those which exhibit him, alike as a young man, an old man, and a man of middle age, attired in knickerbockers, heavily nailed boots, and a picturesquely plumed Tyrolese hat. A certain rapport seems to be established by those portraits between a sportsman Emperor and a nation of sportsmen. Habited in the costume indicated, Francis Joseph has sometimes in the mountains, and even in his own parks, played the part of Haroun-al-Raschid; and many anecdotes are told about his adventures in that character.
Not all of them, of course, are true; and we will hope that the more malicious stories are false. The story, for instance, that Francis Joseph, taking part in a battue in the midst of the troubles of 1866, asked an aged peasant for a light for his pipe, and was told the aged peasant’s candid opinion of Emperors who amused themselves by pursuing game when their subjects were dying for them on the stricken field, is probably the invention of a political malcontent. A more agreeable story—and one at which the Emperor himself may chuckle—is that of his encounter with the farmer who took him for an ordinary trespasser and threatened that, if he did not clear off his land at once, he would first shoot him in the posterior parts as a mark of identification and then inform the police; and he is, no doubt, as pleased as his people are to remember how he once arrested poachers with his own hand in one of his own parks, and having satisfied himself of the truth of their representation that they were honest old soldiers who had come to poverty through no fault of their own, gave orders that they should be given appointments as gamekeepers. A ruler of whom stories of that last kind are told never fails to be popular with the sporting classes of the community; and the parade of gamekeepers from all parts of the Empire, which was one of the most picturesque features of Francis Joseph’s Jubilee celebrations, impresses one as a most proper sequel thereto. These stories, however, though necessary to atmosphere, are only incidental. It is enough to glance at them, just as it is enough to glance at the story of those world-wide wanderings of the Empress which began, long before she had provided Frau Schratt to “entertain” the Emperor during her absence, with her sudden departure for Madeira, in 1860.
Legend has crystallised round that departure: it has been called a “flight,” and attributed to the cumulative effect of three distinct domestic disturbances. First of all, we are told, there was a disturbance caused by the terrible Archduchess Sophia, who would not allow the Empress to bring up the infant Crown Prince in her own way: a trouble which may have been bitter at the time, in spite of Countess Marie Larisch’s assurance that the matter presently became one of absolute indifference to her. In the second place, we are informed, there was a disturbance because Francis Joseph made too public a display of his affectionate regard for a certain Fräulein Roll, of one of the Viennese theatres; and finally, if the reports may be trusted, the quarrel reached its climax because Francis Joseph suffered himself to be fascinated by a peasant girl whom he met when out shooting.
Francis Joseph, on that occasion, according to the story which was current, stayed out all night after dismissing his retainers; and one of the retainers told his wife what had happened; and the lady repeated the story to other ladies of the Court at one of Elizabeth’s receptions; and Elizabeth overheard, and acted on the impulse of the moment. She dismissed her ladies, and called her maid, announcing her intention of setting out at once, secretly, for a long journey. The maid did her bidding; and she got as far as Trieste, where a functionary, sent in pursuit, overtook her and induced her to return—a course to which she consented only on the understanding that, after appearances had been saved, she should be allowed to set out again, with the Emperor’s express approval.
Whether things really happened just like that; whether it is true that the flight was only hindered by the discretion of the captain of the yacht, who opportunely discovered that his engines were out of repair; whether it is also true that Francis Joseph threw himself at Elizabeth’s feet, confessing his fault, imploring her pardon, and ascribing the blame to his mother—all these are points on which a conscientious investigator would hesitate to commit himself. The story—given in M. Weindel’s François-Joseph Intime—is more than fifty years old; and no authoritative correspondence or procès verbal relating to it has been published. All that is positively established is that the doctor was called in, and certified that Elizabeth was suffering from a pulmonary weakness which necessitated her removal to a warmer climate. So she set out for Madeira; and Francis Joseph accompanied her a part of the way. How she left Madeira in a hurry, in consequence of reports sent home concerning her manner of life there, has already been set forth on the authority of Countess Marie Larisch.
That was the beginning of her wanderjahre; and there was to be no end to them until her death. Elizabeth had learnt the importance of keeping up appearances; and she did not forget it. Francis Joseph did not need to learn it; for he has always stood out among the backsliding Habsburgs as a great actor-manager, so to say, keeping up the imperilled dignity of the House by playing a great part on a great stage in a manner worthy of the great traditions to which so many members of his family have proved unfaithful. Noblesse oblige has been his motto, though not theirs—though he may only have given it a limited, spectacular application; and, if Elizabeth did not meet him half way in the matter, at least she went a part of the way to meet him.
The result is known. On great ceremonial occasions Elizabeth consented to appear, as she put it, “in harness,” and performed imperial functions with splendid, though perhaps absent-minded, dignity. She was as beautiful as the Empress Eugénie. She had a grander—a less skittish—manner; and she quite understood that the frame in which her beauty and grandeur were set at Schönbrunn and the Hofburg threw a halo of glory about her head, quite different from that which adorned the rival beauty who was Queen of the Revels at the Tuileries, Fontainebleau, Saint-Cloud, and Compiègne. But she was, nevertheless, always glad when the functions were over and the harness could be taken off. She was like Little Nell’s grandfather, whose one desire was to be “further away.” She never lost that impulse; and, if it ever slackened, something was always sure to happen to renew it. It received a great impetus from the Tragedy of Meyerling; perhaps—it is hardly doubtful—an earlier impetus from the incident which drew from her the bitter remark that “a baby is the end of many love affairs.”
So she wandered as much as she could—though she returned to Vienna when she felt that she must—and a detailed relation of her wanderings would almost read like a chapter from a road-book. She saw the Isles of Greece and the Norwegian Fiords. She bathed on the coast of Norfolk, and hunted in Ireland and in the Shires. She sojourned, for a season, at Steephill Castle near Ventnor in the Isle of Wight—the present dwelling of an American gentleman who sells medicines reputed to be beneficial to the liver; and a red-brick house in which she passed another season is pointed out at Cromer. She also went to Amsterdam for massage, and to Cap Martin to sit in the sun; and she visited her home in Bavaria, and her sisters’ homes in Paris, and stayed at Claridge’s in London, and drank the waters at Kissingen. It was sometimes thought that she deliberately courted death by her daring feats of horsemanship. Her manner became that of a woman for whom life had nothing left, except what converse with Nature could offer. She even spoke of Nature as her “sole mediator with God”; and the scattered fragments of her table talk which those who knew her have preserved, are full of detached sentiments of a kind of poetic pessimism:
“We must try to make islands of ourselves.”
“When we cannot be happy in the way that we desire, there is nothing for it but to fall in love with our sorrows.”