The life of the emperor Francis Joseph

by Francis Henry Gribble

We can. It was assumed by Countess Marie’s reviewers, when her book appeared, that her story connecting John Orth’s departure with the Meyerling tragedy was, whether true or not, at all events quite new. But that assumption was erroneous. Countess Marie was only putting the dots on the i’s—whether she put the right dots on the right i’s or not—of a contemporaneous rumour. One may find the rumour in a work entitled The Private Life of Two Emperors—William II. of Germany and Francis Joseph of Austria—published in the United States, nine years ago, and written, as the publisher’s note states, as far back at 1899. It possesses no sort of authority; one dares not go to it for “inside information”; but it does reflect—for what it is worth—the gossip of the hour. This is what the writer says:—

“There is, it may be added also, a story as to the Archduke’s disappearance which I have never yet seen in print. It connects his exile and his disappearance from the ranks of the members of the Imperial family of Austria with the tragedy of Meyerling and the death of Crown Prince Rudolph. It is difficult to account for the origin thereof, except for the fact which I have just mentioned that the two Archdukes had already once quarrelled, and had been prevented from fighting a duel only by the intervention of the Emperor. There could, therefore, be no longer any love lost between them. Moreover, Archduke Rudolph died at Meyerling in the early part of 1889; Archduke John left Austria and relinquished his military and imperial dignities during that same year, after having been suspended from his divisional command just about the time of the tragedy at Meyerling.”

What is important here is the rumour itself; the inferences drawn from it by the writer do not matter. The suggestion that John Orth was directly concerned with Rudolph’s death is obviously no more than a conjectural explanation of the rumour. How, people were evidently asking themselves, could John Orth’s departure be associated with Rudolph’s death except on the assumption that he had done, or procured, a deed of violence? Countess Marie’s story at least accounts for the association without invoking that hypothesis; and it also accounts for the quarrel between the two Archdukes. It was a quarrel, according to her, between conspirators—the one eager to press forward, and the other frightened into wishing to hang back; and though one gathers from one page of Countess Marie’s book that the secret of the conspiracy was locked up in the steel casket, one reads on another page that the Ministers had an inkling of it. That fact transpires in her account of her interview with Count Julius Andrassy:

“Count Andrassy” (she writes) “said plainly that something beyond a love drama was responsible for the tragedy; the Archduke John corroborated this statement, and the affair of the steel box makes me absolutely certain of it.”

Count Andrassy, that is to say, knew something, but did not choose to tell Countess Marie how much he knew. What was known to him was presumably known to the Emperor too; and their joint knowledge may have been enough to induce them to drive John Orth into exile with menaces. Still, though the conjecture is plausible, certainty is unattainable.

Nor is certainty attainable with regard to John Orth’s alleged marriage to the ballet-girl, Milly Stübel. The stock statement is to the effect that he married her in London; but none of those who make the statement have seen the “marriage lines.” They have been sought for; but the search has been unavailing.[5] One suspects that a ceremony of some sort was performed somewhere—pour acquit de conscience—but that it was a ceremony without legal value. One only gets back to certainty when one comes to speak of John Orth’s voyage to the New World, whither he set sail, on his own ship, the Sainte-Marguerite, on March 26, 1890. But he had passed by way of Switzerland; and it was while he was in Switzerland that he and Francis Joseph exchanged their last communications. That story has been told, in the Berliner Tagblatt, by Marshal Czanadez, at that time attached to the Emperor’s military cabinet:—

[5] Mr. Eveleigh Nash, the publisher, assures the author that he has himself engaged in the investigation very carefully, but with purely negative results.

“John Orth” (Marshal Czanadez wrote) “had hardly left the Empire for Switzerland when the Emperor instructed me to follow him, to deliver a letter to him, and to induce him to return to Vienna. I fulfilled my mission; but I could not influence the Archduke. He told me that he wished to live on his private means in accordance with his tastes. He said that he had a capital sum of 70,000 florins, and proposed to lay it out to the best advantage. Seeing that he would not listen to my arguments, I took Francis Joseph’s letter from my pocket and handed it to him. He ran his eyes over it and turned pale. Trembling with emotion, he handed the letter back to me and pointed to a passage in which the Emperor told him that his renunciation of the title of Archduke was accepted, but that he must never set foot in Austria-Hungary again. My mission was terminated. I returned to Vienna. I told the Emperor its result, and informed him of the details of my conversation with the Archduke. The Emperor made no remark.”

It seems a little confused. The bearer of a letter forbidding John Orth to return to Austria can hardly have been instructed to try to persuade him to return there; so one scents inaccuracy. All that is established is that there were negotiations of some sort, even after John Orth had passed the frontier. We must make what we can of that imperfect information; and we must also make what we can—which is not much—of the letters in which John Orth himself bade his friends farewell. In a letter written to Herr Heinrich, on December 8, 1889, we find him protesting against constructions which have been placed upon his conduct:—

“I give you my word of honour” (he writes) “that my relations with our illustrious and benevolent sovereign have undergone no change. The impossibility of my return to the army must not, any more than my own resolution, be attributed to him....