B008AITH44 EBOK (40 page)

One of the few entertainments was characteristic of Elisabeth. The Empress sent a carriage for the 400-pound giantess Eugénie, who was exhibited in a stall in Merano, to have her brought to her residence, Castle Trattmansdorff, so she could view her.
³⁰

On one of their walks, Elisabeth asked the Countess (of course, speaking in Hungarian), “Aren’t you surprised that I live like a hermit?” And she went on to explain

After one of her conversations with the Empress, Marie Festetics’s diary notes, “She is not at all banal, and one can sense her contemplative life in everything she says! How sad that she fritters away all her time with brooding and has no need to do anything. She has a talent for intellectual activity and altogether a thirst for freedom which finds any limitation terrible.”
³²
Over and over, the lady-in-waiting praised Elisabeth’s human warmth and her outstanding intellectual abilities, which revealed
themselves
in an often sarcastic but always apt wit. But Marie Festetics also saw the negative traits: “In ‘Her’ there is everything, but as in a disordered museum—pure treasures, which go unused. Nor does she know what to do with them.”
³³

On the other hand, the Countess had complete understanding for the Empress’s rejection of the court. As long as Marie Festetics was in Vienna, she criticized the emptiness, formality, mendacity of life at court: “a life that destroys the spirit.” She regretted that “the futility—the decay of life values is felt nowhere so strongly as at a court, once one accustoms oneself to the outward brilliance and becomes so well aware of how it merely lends glitter to the rot, like the golden tinsel on the Christmas nuts and apples;—how well I understand the Empress’s frustration.”
³⁴

But complaints of this sort were hardly sufficient reason for the Empress to leave Vienna for such long periods. There must have been other, more compelling grounds, which we can only guess at. It was precisely during this time of Elisabeth’s absence that Vienna underwent a total reversal in foreign policy. Beust, the former chancellor and foreign minister, was dismissed. His successor was none other than Gyula Andrássy, who had been aspiring of this office (with Elisabeth’s forceful support) since 1867. No documents from this period exist to prove any influencing control on Elisabeth’s part in Andrássy’s favor. Other factors were in play as well, especially Beust’s rather belligerent attitude during the Franco-Prussian War, while Andrássy favored a neutral position for Austria-Hungary—and made his view prevail.

In any case, Andrássy saw himself as the savior of the monarchy. Very similarly, Elisabeth later stated in a poem that in 1871, Andrássy had “pulled the carriage out of the mud.”
³⁵
He formulated an entirely new policy. While Beust had been Bismarck’s great antagonist, Andrássy now sought to find an understanding with the German Empire, thus complying with Bismarck’s intentions. Both—Bismarck as well as Andrássy—worked
toward the great goal of reconciling the enemies of Königgrätz and to conclude a German-Austrian alliance. This objective was realized in the Dual Alliance of 1879.

Precisely what happened to cause the dismissal of Count Beust and the appointment of Andrássy is not clear to this day, in spite of extensive research.
³⁶
The principal open question concerns the role played by
Elisabeth
in the appointment. That she kept her distance entirely is hard to believe. For even in later years, she made her aversion to Beust and her agreement with Andrássy’s policy only too clear. But her political
interference
had made bad blood as early as 1867, especially as it concerned Andrássy personally. Now, when this statesman was responsible not only for Hungarian affairs, but also for the foreign policy of the entire empire, the fear in Vienna was great that the liberal Andrássy might—as he had so masterfully done in 1860—use Elisabeth again for his political ends and thus grasp greater authority than any other foreign minister before or after him. This concern was understandable. It is therefore quite possible (but simply not provable, because no correspondence between the Emperor and Empress from this critical period is preserved) that, with her long absences from Vienna precisely during the critical period of Andrássy’s nomination, Elisabeth was intent on foiling all discussions about her political influence. As things were, she strengthened Andrássy’s position. The conservative Court Party (the one that was called the Kamarilla by the Liberals) around Archduke Albrecht and Archduchess Sophie complained about the new political course of events. Even Andrássy was unable to make any changes in Sophie’s hatred of Prussia. And the logically liberal course of domestic policy—which would soon succeed in rescinding the Concordat—brought additional sad hours to the ailing old woman. On New Year’s Eve of 1871, after Andrássy had become foreign minister, Sophie recorded her great bitterness in her diary: “liberalism with all its experts, all its impossibilities. May God have mercy on us!”
³⁷

The relationship between Elisabeth and Andrássy continued, even if nothing more about it was heard in public. The correspondence went on by way of three Hungarian intermediaries within Elisabeth’s closest circle: Ida Ferenczy; the new lady-in-waiting, Countess Festetics; and the new chief chamberlain, Baron Nopcsa, who was a friend of Andrássy’s. The largest and most important part of this correspondence was destroyed—probably for good reason—by Ida Ferenczy. The few letters that survive include, along with unimportant suggestions, Andrássy’s request that the Empress improve relations with the German Empire to the best of her ability, especially through court visits. And in spite of all her reservations
about the “Prussians,” Elisabeth really did make active efforts. She
maintained
good, even cordial, relations with the German Crown Prince and his wife, especially with Crown Princess Victoria, who was about the same age and very prominent in politics. Elisabeth cultivated these contacts because Andrássy considered them important and appropriate, but also because the German Crown Princess, a champion of liberalism, was
politically
entirely on her (and Andrássy’s) side. Elisabeth also continued to pass on Andrássy’s wishes to her husband—when, for example, it became time to appoint a new Hungarian prime minister. “If only you could win over Tisza, he would surely be best of all. Yesterday Andrássy was still with me,” she wrote in 1874.
³⁸

When, at the end of April 1872, displeasure at the Empress’s overly long absence from Vienna grew louder, it was Andrássy who wrote to Ida Ferenczy in Merano, “I should like to ask you to bring your influence to bear on Her Majesty so that she will not remain away from the capital for long.”
³⁹
And in fact, about two weeks after receipt of the letter, Elisabeth returned to Vienna.

*

Though the Empress had paid little enough attention to either of her two older children, when the time came to find a suitable candidate to marry fifteen-year-old Gisela, she sprang into action. Elisabeth always bemoaned her own fate, having been married so young, and yet she gave her daughter no chance to take time with her marriage, let alone to go her own way. (It was not until she came to her youngest, Marie Valerie, that Elisabeth was generous, declaring that Valerie would be allowed to marry even a chimney sweep if she really had her heart set on it.) As Duchess Ludovika had done at one time, now Elisabeth also brought family relations into play.

Gisela was not very pretty. The royal Catholic houses of Europe, moreover, had no suitable princes to offer during the 1870s. Once more, therefore, Bavaria was considered, the candidate being Prince Leopold, the second son of Prince Luitpold. He was ten years older than Gisela.

Leopold was not free. Negotiations concerning a marriage with Princess Amalie of Coburg had been going on for a long time. This same Amalie of Coburg was adored by Sisi’s youngest brother, Max Emanuel (“
Map-perl”
); but probably no one at the Viennese court except the Empress was aware of this. Now there was great astonishment at Elisabeth’s unusual action; she invited the quasi-groom of Princess Amalie to Budapest and Gödöllö in the spring of 1872. The official occasion was a snipe hunt.
Elisabeth to Leopold: “In this way, it will, it is to be hoped, raise no questions.”
⁴⁰

Leopold dragged out the negotiations with the House of Coburg
because,
as he said, they were unable to agree on a dowry (a matter of 50,000 guldens was at stake). Princess Amalie suspected nothing. Furthermore, as luck would have it, she happened to be in Budapest at the same time as Leopold, giving rise to many awkward situations.

Leopold’s engagement to Gisela was settled after only a few days. Countess Festetics about the bride: “She is happy, as a child will be—a beautiful couple they are not.”
⁴¹
The Emperor wrote to his mother, “The whole thing was simple, cordial, patriarchal, although Sisi and I simply are not patriarchs yet.”
⁴²
Sophie’s comment: “The domestic happiness of
the little one and the good Leopold seems assured to me, but the marriage cannot count as a great match.”
⁴³

In spite of everything, the groom had a bad conscience; writing from Hungary, he expressed his concern to one of his aunts. “If only it does not harm A[malie]. Actually I am very concerned…. When I left, I met A on the stairs; she looked very cheerful. The poor thing….” Leopold, however, quickly found comfort. “Fate determined it that way, and it could not be otherwise. Gisela is so nice, has her father’s kind eyes.”
⁴⁴
For Leopold, the connection with the daughter of the Emperor of Austria was worth all the trouble. From her grandfather Archduke Franz Karl and her grandmother Sophie alone Gisela received 500,000 guldens on the occasion of her marriage.
⁴⁵

With the utmost cleverness, Elisabeth allowed a considerable length of time to pass, so that the scorned Princess Amalie might recover from her shock. Then—in May 1875—she personally, with the help of Countess Marie Festetics, negotiated the marriage of her brother to Amalie of Coburg.
⁴⁶
Even on this occasion, however, Elisabeth did not suppress her poor opinion of marriage, declaring it a “strange fancy, when one is so young to give up one’s freedom. But one never knows the value of what one has until one has lost it.”
⁴⁷
The marriage arranged by Elisabeth was a very happy one.

Whether Elisabeth made any efforts to prepare her daughter for
marriage
is not known. That she did not deal with such prosaic matters as the trousseau, leaving its acquisition entirely to her staff, was a matter of course. Remembering the devotion and personal commitment with which at one time Duchess Ludovika looked after young Elisabeth, how even mother-in-law Sophie spent months preparing everything for the new
Empress with the greatest care—from bed linens through the knickknacks to the rugs—one can understand why the entourage railed “at the
heartlessness
of the Empress,” as Festetics’s diary records.
⁴⁸

It was true that Gisela was colorless in every respect and not a daughter one could easily show off. She had nothing of her mother’s and brother’s flights of fancy. In her modesty she resembled her father, and modest as she was, she did not rebel against her mother. In the end, she became a good, calm, somewhat plump wife and mother of four. Not a single word of Elisabeth’s is preserved that might indicate a loving affection for her older daughter.

*

Shortly after Gisela’s engagment, the substitute mother of the two older children, Archduchess Sophie, who had been ill for some time, died. Thus the only person who might have paid attention to the bride, not yet sixteen years old, was removed. Sophie’s death was a difficult one and took a long time. Her will to live had been broken by the death of her second son, Max. Bravely she had endured, fulfilling her duties to her husband, her children and grandchildren, and the Habsburg family. But during the last few years, she had neither taken part in political affairs, the direction of which she found deeply distasteful, nor dared to advise Elisabeth.

Sophie’s ties to the Emperor continued deep and close. Everyone at the court could witness the Emperor’s grief at his mother’s decline.
Unflaggingly
solicitous, he watched at her bedside for many hours. He had straw strewn along the Burgplatz to lessen the rumble of the heavy carriages. At this time, Elisabeth was in Merano, but she interrupted her cure at the news of Sophie’s imminent death and returned to Vienna.

For ten days and nights the imperial family was at Sophie’s deathbed. She experienced several cerebral hemorrhages and from time to time lost the power of speech.