B008AITH44 EBOK (24 page)

But the worst was her low emotional state. Ludovika: “She is infinitely kind and loving to me, but often I find her sad … depressed.” Ludovika was “weighed down by the thought of all that the Emperor is having to do without and how dreadfully his happiness is destroyed.” Sisi’s fear of wasting away with dropsy over a period of years “wrings tears from her eyes,” Ludovika wrote, “and countless times she asks Gackel and me whether we found her very changed, whether she looked like someone with the dropsy! Often we do not know what to say? … But now and then she is quite cheerful again; my ladies find her immensely charming and in the evenings usually quite lively.” Ludovika did everything to brighten her daughter’s spirits, “but an old person like myself is, to be sure, not quite suited to it.”

The conclusion that the physicians had probably been treating her incorrectly was now voiced. “Much has been done for her health, but unfortunately never the right thing, although it has cost such enormous sacrifices. Fischer was the only one who diagnosed her correctly always—and he was opposed to the long voyages and the hot climates!”
⁴⁷

The Emperor also twice visited his wife in Venice. He used his stays, however, mainly for troop inspections and parades, occasionally taking three-year-old Rudolf along.

When she had no visitors, Sisi struggled with her major problem: boredom. Her favorite occupation during later years, hiking, was
impossible
because of her chronically swollen feet. She was chained, therefore, to the house most of the time; she spent the long days playing cards, reading a little, and collecting photographs.

First she procured pictures of family members, including her favorites among the servants in her parents’ home and the nursemaids who looked after the children during her absences from Vienna. She extended the collection more and more, including diplomats, court officials, aristocrats, and finally her favorite actors, as well as (true daughter of Duke Max of Bavaria) jugglers and clowns. She devoted special zeal to collecting the photographs of famous beauties, asking Austrian diplomats to send her pictures of beautiful women from Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Constantinople.
⁴⁸

*

In May 1862, after a stay of almost a year in Corfu and Venice, the Empress, still gravely ill, arrived in Reichenau an der Rax and from there, on Dr. Fischer’s orders, traveled on to Bad Kissingen to take the cure—without stopping in Vienna. This time the diagnosis was dropsy. Once
again, the physician in charge of the case was Dr. Fischer, who had an intimate acquaintance with the Duke of Bavaria’s family, along with its many eccentricities.

Sisi’s condition improved quickly under Dr. Fischer’s rigorous, probably also psychologically adroit treatment. As early as July,
Die
Presse
reassured “the minds of those who imagined the exalted invalid to be in the final stages of pulmonary tuberculosis,” though the newspaper did mention a new diagnosis, this time a “disease of the blood-forming organs (lymph nodes and spleen).”
⁴⁹

A week later, a reporter on the same paper wrote, “I saw the Empress, who a few weeks ago had almost to be carried, repeatedly promenading for hours at the Curplatz without resting, without coughing even once, although she was engaged in conversation most of the time.”
⁵⁰
At the festive illumination and the fireworks which Kissingen organized on the occasion of her recovery, the Empress, in good spirits, appeared on the arm of her father, Duke Max. Max, as well as Sisi’s favorite brother, Karl Theodor, had taken the Kissengen cure with her. One can only speculate about the extent of her father’s concern with Sisi’s health.

*

Yet even now Sisi did not trust herself to return to Vienna. Once again she fled to Possenhofen. Among her brothers and sisters, in the familiar, noisy, bohemian atmosphere of the manor, she summoned up her strength before the unavoidable return to the Viennese court and married life.

The court ladies who traveled with her outdid each other in relating horror stories about the “beggars’ household” and loose practices of
Elisabeth’s
parents’ home. To them, Possenhofen was a place “that has caused us many a vexation.” The pedigrees of the Bavarian court ladies, they pointed out, were far from impeccable. Therese Fürstenberg, one of
Archduchess
Sophie’s ladies-in-waiting, for example, wrote to Austria, “My colleagues, five in number, with one exception owe their existence to cooks, tradesmen’s daughters, and the like; they are pretty good souls on the whole, but a few nevertheless reveal their maternal heritage.” The noise, she reported, was earsplitting, the table manners were impossible; “and the Duchess [that is, Elisabeth’s mother], who lives for her dogs, always has some on her lap next to her or under her arm and cracks fleas on the dinner plates! But the plates are replaced at once!”
⁵¹

Greater contrasts than those between Vienna and Possenhofen can hardly be imagined. The same lady-in-waiting described imperial family life in Vienna. “You have no idea, by the way, how boring and uncomfortable such an exalted family circle is, and yet one is inclined to believe that being
among themselves would do them good; but there they sit, according to rank and speak according to rank or rather do not speak; bore each other and are glad when the family party is over. Really, it often makes you sorry to see what a sad life they lead and how they have no idea how to make it more pleasant for themselves; each one lives in isolation, alone, cultivates his boredom or pursues his ‘private pleasures.’”
⁵²

That a young woman such as Elisabeth would try to escape this
monotonous
life, preferring the Possenhofen idyll, was met with a total lack of understanding at the Viennese court. After all, Elisabeth was an
empress-queen,
for whom such supersensitivity was not fitting.

In Possenhofen she met her “Italian” sisters, ex-Queen Marie of Naples and Countess Mathilde Trani (“Spatz”). They too had fled to “Possi,” leaving their husbands behind in Rome.

That there were difficulties in Marie’s marriage all the family knew. Queen Marie of Saxony, for example, wrote that the King of Naples was “very undeveloped when it comes to marital love, with all the affection and admiration he expresses to others about Marie, he is nevertheless said never to have let her near his heart, though, as she used to say, she made every effort.” She hinted that the young husband suffered from phimosis (tightness or constriction of the orifice of the prepuce), making intercourse impossible.
⁵³

Mathilde’s husband (a younger brother of the ex-King of Naples), on the other hand, was very merry and not inclined to take his marriage vows very seriously. Ludovika on her two daughters, Marie and Mathilde: “I would have wished them husbands who had more character and knew how to give them guidance, of which both are still in great need; but good as the two brothers are, they are no support to their wives.”
⁵⁴

In Rome, the two sisters were constantly together, and they shared secrets. With Mathilde’s help, ex-Queen Marie began a love affair with a Belgian count, an officer in the Papal Guard. Mathilde was said to console herself with a Spanish grandee. After a few happy months, retribution set in: Marie became pregnant. In dire straits, she fled to Possenhofen under the pretext of illness. Dr. Fischer took her under his wing. Poor Ludovika was in a flurry of excitement. Duke Max, however, kept his composure: “Well, all right, such things happen,” he said. “What’s the point of cackling?”
⁵⁵

In the midst of this situation and adding to it, Sisi came to Possenhofen. What the three sisters talked about during these weeks, in what ways they influenced each other, we do not know. Whatever the case, it is certain that their relationships had changed. Now it was the oldest, Elisabeth, at
twenty-four, who was instructed by both her younger sisters. Sisi could not keep pace with Marie’s and Mathilde’s adventures. But with horror she also became aware of Marie’s poor emotional state and her utter
unhappiness
following the separation from the man she loved.

Marie’s regrettable frame of mind (the true cause of which no one except the closest family members knew) was described at length in the
newspapers.
She was observed in the pilgrimage church of Altötting, spending hours in silent prayers. It was told that, in Sisi’s presence, she had said, “Oh, if only a bullet had struck me at Gaeta!”
⁵⁶

During their conversations, the sisters forgot the world around them. Sisi’s ladies-in-waiting, even her new chatelaine, Countess Königsegg, were deeply offended at being so constantly ignored—“because Her Majesty grows more and more estranged from her Austrian surroundings,” as Crenneville wrote in his diary.
⁵⁷

Though ex-Queen Marie had sent her Neapolitan retinue back to
Naples,
Elisabeth had brought a considerable body of servants to Possenhofen: hairdressers, footmen, and lesser servants, for whom there was no room in the small castle. The nearby inns had their hands full taking care of the Austrian overflow.

The unrest in his house, combined with the unremitting secret-
mongering
and whispering of his three older daughters, as well as the complaints of his wife, finally became too much for the hotheaded Duke Max. One of the rages for which he was famous in the family broke out; it ended with the three married daughters having to leave Possenhofen. Queen Marie of Saxony reported that her brother-in-law “suddenly was of the opinion that his daughters were a burden in his house: that is why the reunion of the children in Possi, which was such a consolation to my poor Louise (that quietly suffering bearer of her cross!) came to a quick end.”
⁵⁸

In November 1862, in the Convent of St. Ursula in Augsburg, Marie gave birth in total secrecy, but she had to give the child, a girl, to its biological father. Her secret remained safe. Five months later, Marie
returned
to her husband in Rome. After the ex-King underwent an
operation,
and after Marie confessed, the marriage turned out to be fairly harmonious after all.

*

Duke Max’s putting his foot down made it impossible for Elisabeth to remain in Possenhofen any longer. She had to return to her husband. But there were further difficulties. The Emperor and his mother were spending the summer in Bad Ischl; but Sisi refused adamantly to go anywhere near her mother-in-law. The imperial adjutant general, Count Crenneville,
moaned in his diary, “Oh, women, women!!!! with or without a crown, dressed in silk or percale, have caprices and few are exempt.”
⁵⁹

A few days before the Emperor’s birthday on August 18, 1862, the Empress returned to Vienna on very short notice. Franz Joseph wrote his mother in Bad Ischl “how happy I am to have Sisi with me again and thus finally, after doing without for so long, to possess an ‘at home.’ The reception by the populace of Vienna was truly very warm and agreeable. It has been a long time since there have been such good spirits here.”
⁶⁰

Even on this happy occasion, however, the newspapers did not muffle their demands to the Imperial House. “The land is glad of the recovery of its Princess,” wrote the
M
or
gen-Post
, for example, “may the Princess also soon find cause to be pleased in the same measure at the full recovery of the country from all the wounds with which it is still afflicted, from all the evils from which it still suffers. May she live happily by the side of her imperial consort among a happy people!”
⁶¹

The imperial couple was minutely observed. During the past two years, there had been so much gossip about Elisabeth that her every gesture was grounds for discussion. One lady-in-waiting wrote, “
His
expression as he lifted her out of the carriage I will never forget. I find her blooming but not natural looking, her expression forced and nervous
au
possible
, her color so high that I find her heated, hectic, and not quite swollen anymore but very fat and changed in the face.”
⁶²

In a letter to her father, Archduchess Therese described how Sisi received her relatives in Schönbrunn. “She was friendly but nevertheless stiff; during the trip the poor thing vomited 4 times and with it a severe migraine. She told Aunt Elisabeth that her eyes were so swollen, that she cried so terribly when she had to leave her dear Possi; she arose at 4 in the morning to walk around the garden before her departure.” Therese also mentioned that one of the houses festively decorated to welcome the Empress sported the ambiguous banner, “Good, strong constitution, long life!”
⁶³

The fact that Sisi arrived in Vienna, not alone, but accompanied by her brothers, was also an occasion for biting comments. “The fact that Prince Karl Theodor came along is proof of how much she dreads being alone with
him
and with us.” Every glance and every gesture made by the Empress and the Emperor were observed. “At least in front of us, she is very friendly with him, talkative and natural,
alla
camera
there may be many differences of opinion, that becomes apparent sometimes.”
⁶⁴