B008AITH44 EBOK (14 page)

Not until the next summer in Bad Ischl did she see Sisi again. Earlier, she expressed her indecision in a letter to Marie of Saxony. “I have been invited by Sophie and the good Emperor. But I do not know whether it is sensible for a number of reasons, it would be difficult for me personally from a financial aspect. Whether it would be good for Sisi to be with us again so soon? … That is why I have not yet decided, although I often feel such great longing for her!!!”
⁴⁶

The arrival of the Bavarian relatives in Bad Ischl was not without its comic aspects. “Empress Elisabeth, Ischl. Arriving with Spatz and Gackel. Mimi”—so read the telegram from Possenhofen, with the notation of the time when the train would be arriving in Lambach, the railroad station closest to Bad Ischl. A carriage was to meet the travelers there. When Ludovika (whom Sisi always called Mimi) and her children Mathilde (nicknamed Spatz) and Karl Theodor (Gackel) and their servants detrained in Lambach, no carriage was waiting. Great consternation. After a while, a servant from the Hotel Elisabeth in Bad Ischl timidly approached the disconcerted travelers. He was carrying two cages, one in each hand, for the expected birds (
Spatz
means “sparrow,” and
Gackel
means “rooster”), which had been heralded by a traveler named Mimi. The misunderstanding was soon cleared up. And Ludovika arrived at the imperial villa in Bad Ischl in a garishly lacquered carriage from the hotel, to be received with great astonishment, since no one had had any notice that she was arriving.
⁴⁷

Ludovika’s self-confidence was not bolstered by these events. They only increased her fear of her energetic sister, Sophie. Ludovika, deferential and diffident, relied absolutely on her sister’s judgment. When Sophie went to Dresden and the Emperor to Vienna to look after his affairs, while Ludovika remained behind in Bad Ischl with Sisi, Ludovika felt helpless: “Now I wish twice as much that Sophie were here; for she really is the life and soul of everything, and without her one does not know to whom to turn. One also sees what great love attaches the Emperor to his mother, it is a wonderful relationship.”
⁴⁸

About her daughter, Ludovika wrote to Bavaria, “I found Sisi grown larger and heavier, although her condition is not very evident yet, on the whole she is well, though afflicted with a great deal of queasiness, which sometimes depresses her a little, but she never complains and tries only too hard to conceal this discomfort; but it often makes her more quiet, but the change of coloring, which cannot be concealed, most readily reveals her condition.”
⁴⁹

In Bad Ischl, the young Empress had no household of her own. Even when her mother-in-law was away, Sisi was under constant observation. Franz Joseph’s twelve-year-old brother, Archduke Ludwig Viktor, once wrote indignantly to Archduchess Sophie, “Dear Mama, since you went away, strange things are going on here, to Papa’s [Franz Karl’s] great consternation; that is, the Empress and Lenza [Joseph Legrenzi, the
Emperor’s
chief valet de chambre] do as they like. Poor Papa complains to me every morning at breakfast … poor Zehkorn [court clerk in Sophie’s service] runs around like crazy…. Countess Esterházy and Paula
[Bellegarde]
wring their hands.”
⁵⁰
This letter allows us to draw some conclusions about the attitude within the family concerning the Empress.

During her pregnancy, the sixteen-year-old grew even more depressed, especially because Sophie forced her over and over to appear in public. Later, Elisabeth was to tell Marie Festetics, “Hardly had she arrived than she dragged me out into the garden and declared that it was my duty to show off my stomach, so that the people could see that I really was pregnant. It was awful. Instead, it seemed to me a blessing to be alone and able to weep.”
⁵¹

Archduchess Sophie firmly took all the necessary preparations for the forthcoming blessed event into her own hands. She decided where the nurseries were to be installed: not near the imperial couple, but next to her own apartments, which she ordered redecorated at the same time. Thus, even months before the birth, she decided that Elisabeth was to be separated from her child. For the “baby chamber” was accessible from the imperial
apartments only by way of several steep staircases and drafty corridors, and at the same time was so closely connected to Sophie’s apartments that the young mother could not visit her child without Sophie’s being present.

Nor did Elisabeth have a say in the selection of the “Aja.” Sophie chose Baroness Karoline von Welden, the widow of the artillery commander who had distinguished himself in the suppression of the uprising in
Hungary
in 1848–1849. Baroness von Welden had no children of her own and no experience of child rearing. Her choice was a purely political decision and a recognition of the Baroness’s late husband’s merits. The principal work in the nursery was left to Leopoldine Nischer, whom Sophie
prepared
for her task in repeated discussions.

In all these decisions the young Empress was not only bypassed but even treated like a child. She was to do her duty: appear in public until she dropped, and have a baby as soon as possible—although she was only sixteen. That she had desires and needs, that she wanted to be acknowledged as a person in her own right, not even the enamored Emperor recognized.

The crisis in the East was still acute. Reinforcements were sent to the Russian border. The Czar of Russia turned into an enemy once and for all. Franz Joseph wrote his mother, “It is hard to have to oppose former friends, however in politics it is not possible to do otherwise, and in the East, Russia is always our natural enemy.”
⁵²

Austria lost her old ally, Russia, without gaining new friends in the West. The country would have to pay dearly for her political isolation during the subsequent wars waged by Franz Joseph—in 1859 in the cause of Lombardy, in 1866 in the cause of Venetia and predominance in
Germany,
and even, finally, in 1914. The fact that this infinitely complex political situation happened to coincide with the Emperor’s wedding and the early years of his marriage is surely not without its tragic aspects. The emotional and mental stress on the Emperor left him far too little time for his young wife. His constant absences allowed the differences between Sophie and Elisabeth to grow into irreconcilable antagonisms, which had their full effect on the imperial marriage.

The bankrupt state was not able to raise the monies required for
mobilization.
A “national loan” of 500 million guldens was floated. Proud and self-confident, Franz Joseph wrote his mother, “We will deal with the feared revolution even without Russia, and a country that in one year manages without difficulty to enlist 200,000 recruits and brings about a loan of more than 500 million guldens within its borders is not yet so very wasted by revolution.”
⁵³
Nevertheless, such good judges of the situation
as Baron Kübeck deeply regretted that the Emperor and his mother held completely erroneous ideas about the methods used to extort the money from the provinces, which were causing great bitterness throughout the realm. “The Emperor seemed to me very cheerful and wholly subject to the deceptions spread around him.” And: “The way every population group talks about the methods used to raise the levy seems to be unknown in these regions.”
⁵⁴

In the spring of 1855, the new minister of finance, Baron Karl von Bruck, faced an unusual situation; for the upkeep of the army alone, every year 36 million guldens more were spent than the entire income raised by the state.
⁵⁵

In order to raise funds for the mobilization for the Crimean War in addition to the moneys procured by taxes, the loan, and shady bank manipulations, in 1856 Austria sold her railroads and coal mines to a French banker—a highly dubious business, since only about half the sum the railroads had cost was realized. (The sale was soon to prove calamitous, especially in the Northern Italian provinces. For in the 1859 war with France—that is, three years later—Austria could not count on the
reliability
of the French railroad personnel for troop transports, while Napoleon III could be all the more confident. The railroads had subsequently to be bought back by Austria at a far higher price.
⁵⁶
) Rising prices and famine were rampant in all the Austrian provinces. Epidemics of cholera broke out, first among the troops concentrated in Walachia. The imperial family had no idea what was happening among the ordinary people. Archduchess Sophie was just as persuaded by the ideas of an absolute monarchy as was her son who, though he dutifully read his files, had no knowledge of human nature nor felt any need of such knowledge.

For the uninformed young Empress, the Crimean War was merely an occasion for jealousy. For the Emperor often spent hours with his mother discussing the political situation, while little Sisi felt neglected and
discriminated
against for being too immature. Later, Elisabeth repeatedly told her children, as if to justify herself, about these difficult early years of her marriage. Even Sisi’s younger daughter, Marie Valerie, knew “about Mama’s sad youth, how Grandmama Sophie stood between her and Papa, always claimed his confidence, and in a way forever made impossible their getting to know each other and an understanding between Papa and Mama.”
⁵⁷
But since the young woman, as all her letters as well as Sophie’s diaries for the early period show, was extremely shy and lacking in self-confidence, was even submissive to her imperial consort, these
differences
could not be aired. Sisi suffered in silence, wept, composed
melancholy
verses. Franz Joseph, for his part, believed fully in “my complete domestic happiness.”
⁵⁸

That the young couple were different not only by temperament and upbringing but also in their tastes became increasingly clear as the days passed. As an example we need only mention
A
Midsummer
Night’s
Dream;
this was Sisi’s favorite play, and eventually she committed great sections of it to memory. Franz Joseph to Sophie: “Yesterday I went with Sisi to the
Midsummer
Night’s
Dream
by Shakespeare in the Burgtheater…. It was quite boring and very stupid. Only Beckmann wearing a donkey’s head was amusing.”
⁵⁹

Even as a child, Sisi had read a great deal. And though she was
uneducated
about court conditions (at least as far as ceremonial and French conversation went), she nevertheless, unlike Franz Joseph, took a lively interest in literature and history. Writing about the early period,
Weckbecker
related that during one railway journey he had told the young Empress “what I knew about the history of the places, especially of Wiener Neustadt. She listened with interest, and clearly it captured her more than the gossip of Countess Esterházy.”
⁶⁰

Only a few months after the resplendent wedding, the intoxication of novelty had worn off. The young Empress had to prove herself and withstand criticism, in spite of her tender years, both as “mother of the country”—although she knew next to nothing about “her” country—and most especially as first lady among the Austrian nobility. And here
Elisabeth
failed. The Viennese nobility sharply criticized this Empress, so clearly not “well brought up.” Even family members, such as Prince Alexander of Hesse, considered Sisi beautiful but stupid. In November 1854, he wrote in his diary that, in spite of her advanced pregnancy, the Empress was very beautiful but “After her stereotypical questions, ‘Have you been here long?’ ‘How long will you be staying in Vienna?’ apparently a little
bûche
,
a word the French are in the habit of using to designate people of low intelligence.”
⁶¹

There was constant talk about the Empress’s lack of accomplishments: that she had not mastered protocol, that she did not dance well enough, that she dressed with insufficient elegance. Not once did her critics deal with intellectual or social skills; books and learning had no place in the world of the court. And as the American envoy John Motley wrote, the famous salon at court was in no way a criterion for intelligence. “But I think that no reasonable being ought to like a salon. There are three topics—the Opera, the Prater, the Burg Theatre; when these are exhausted, you are floored. Conversazioni where the one thing that does not exist is conversation, are not the most cheerful of institutions.”
⁶²
The American envoy failed to mention that the aristocrats’ principal occupation was gossip—for everyone knew everyone else and was, for all practical
purposes,
related to everyone else. As a diplomat, after all, he was no more a part of the inner circle at court than was the young Empress, who, because of her station, had to remain above this family tattle, and who, by virtue of her origins and upbringing, had no points of contact with such conversations. She stood outside, and whether she wanted to or not, she had to allow herself to be criticized and measured against the norms of the Viennese court.