CHAPTER VIII
PLANNING TO GET A HUSBAND FOR ME
Dissecting possible wooers at Vienna—Royalty after money, not character—"He is a Cohen, not a Coburg"—Prince who looked like a Jew counter-jumper in his Sunday best—Balkan princes tabooed by Francis Joseph—A good time for the girls—Army men commanded to attend us.
Castle Wachwitz, April 25, 1893.
A change of scene. I was eighteen and my parents were anxious to get a husband for me. Royalty marries off its princes at an early age to keep them out of mischief; its princesses as soon as a profitable suitor turns up or can be secured by politics, diplomacy, the exercise of parental wits or the powerful influence of the head of the House.
Sister Anna, now Princess John of Hohenlohe, myself and mother were invited to Vienna. It was my introduction to royal pomp and circumstance. The Hofburg, our town lodging, seemed to me the first and also the last cry in sumptuousness—all that was beautiful and expensive in days gone by is there, and all that is new and desirable is there, too; Schoenbrunn, the Imperial summer residence, is a dream of loveliness wedded to grandeur. Between the Emperor and my mother and between her and the numerous archduchesses and archdukes every second word uttered referred to me as the possible wife of someone or another. And that someone was well dissected as to fortune, success in life and political exigencies.
Whether he was good-looking or a monkey in face and figure mattered not. Health, good character, uprightness didn't count.
Has he expectations for gaining a throne? Will he be wise enough to retain that throne? What kind of an establishment will he be able to set up? How long may his parents live, hanging on to the family fortune?—These were the only considerations deemed worthy of discussion.
Three or four of the archduchesses seemed to be acting as marriage brokers for Ferdinand, just elected hereditary prince of Bulgaria, whose mother, Princess Clementine, a daughter of the dethroned King Louis Philippe of France, was reputed to be rolling in gold.
Leopold irreverently called Ferdinand's partisans "Fillons" after famous "La Fillon," who supplied the harem of our jolly ancestor, the Regent of France, Duke of Orleans, and he insisted that Ferdinand was a Cohen, not a Coburg. As a matter of fact, Ferdinand's great fortune is derived from a Kohary, which is Hungarian for Cohen. The original Kohary was a cattle-dealer, who supplied the armies of the Allies during the Napoleonic wars. In this way he accumulated so much wealth that an impoverished Coburg prince fell in love with his daughter and made her his wife, after she exchanged the name of Rebecca for Antonie and the Mosaic faith for that of Rome.