B008AITH44 EBOK (46 page)

Early in March 1876, she arrived in England, this time feeling an urge to call on the Queen—and received a rebuff. “If I were so rude!” she huffed indignantly in a letter to Franz Joseph. “But everyone on whom I have paid calls in the evenings has been ashamed, because I was gracious, have already been everywhere.”
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Everything had been prepared to such an extent that from the first day, Elisabeth could enjoy hunting. One of the best horsemen in England, Bay Middleton, had been engaged to pilot her. Middleton, exactly thirty years old at the time, a dashing sportsman well known for his unpolished manners, was anything but eager to take on this mission to shepherd a monarch from the Continent. Standoffish and arrogant, he showed no ambition whatever to assume this “boring position,” as he called it. Finally, after much coaxing, he accepted “just this once.”
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Elisabeth came to hear of these utterances, which were far from cordial. But no matter how sensitive she might be at other times, now she showed no anger. She was eager to show him that she really did understand something about horses and that she could ride with the best of them even though she was an empress. His self-confident, rude manner had already earned Elisabeth’s respect before she met him. This sturdy, red-haired young Scotsman, who was hard of hearing and nine years her junior, was one of the few people from whom Elisabeth was willing to take orders.

The hunts were exhausting. The large, strong horses were ridden at great speeds across the high wooden fences that enclosed the fields. Ladies found it especially hard going, since they were handicapped by their long skirts and the cumbersome sidesaddles. There were only a few women in Europe who could keep up with the English hunts. Elisabeth was determined to be best, and she achieved her ambition, becoming extolled as the “Queen Riding to Hounds.” Only half a dozen, perhaps, of over a hundred riders who set out would last the course. More and more frequently, the Austrian Empress, led by the sure horseman’s instincts of Bay Middleton, was one of them.

Countess Festetics, however, never stopped worrying. “I tremble all day long and I grow calm only in the evening, when I know that H. M. is getting ready for bed. Touch wood, she is well, in very good humor she amuses the entire company.”
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Considering the fanaticism with which Elisabeth concentrated on the sport that captured all her energies for almost a decade, it becomes easy to understand her close personal ties to
the man who was at her side in the hours of her most glittering triumphs—and to whom she owed many of them. Bay Middleton was a man who elicited Elisabeth’s respect—and that meant a great deal to her.

The chief chamberlain and the ladies-in-waiting spent the weeks in England without seeing much of their Empress. Bay was always at her side. He helped her into the saddle. He pulled her out of the ditch when she tumbled. He spurred her on, and, unlike all the others, he did not try to restrain her temperament during the hunt. He was allowed to praise her, and he was allowed to criticize her—she accepted everything willingly, like a child. He also chose horses for her to buy, the most expensive ones in all of England. She had money enough, after all. Elisabeth to her husband, who was heartsick in Vienna, worrying about his wife: “Your horses are none of them worth anything, slow and dull; here quite different material is needed.”
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Not content with causing gossip about the inseparability of Empress and guide; not content with incurring enormous expenses for horses and all that
was connected with them—Elisabeth once again became responsible for diplomatic complications. Since she was unwilling to give up even one day of hunting, she announced that she would call on the Queen at Windsor on Sunday—the one day of the week when the British Royal Family made it a rule never to receive visitors. Furthermore, she did not keep to the appointed time but arrived too early—during religious services. Queen Victoria left the church in order to receive Elisabeth, “very chic, in black, with furs,” and was told that Elisabeth had changed her mind and would not, as had been arranged, stay for luncheon.
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The extremely disconcerting and discourteous visit lasted exactly three-quarters of an hour and was hardly suited to improve relations between the two ruling houses.

Worse was to come. The train that took Elisabeth and her entourage from Windsor back to London became stuck in the snow. The Empress and her people were confined to the carriage “almost four hours, in deathly fear of some later train,” as Countess Festetics wrote.
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No one had had anything to eat since early morning. Finally, the station master provided them with the bare essentials—meager enough for thirteen people. The English newspapers dealt at length with this event, criticizing Queen Victoria severely for failing to at least invite the Empress of Austria to stay to lunch. Explanations and counterexplanations followed, with much
irritation
on all sides.

Elisabeth aggravated the awkward situation by visiting Baron
Ferdinand
Rothschild the following day. She looked over his celebrated stud farm and spent more than a day in his company.

Among her horsey friends, Elisabeth was more cheerful than she could ever be in Vienna. On the last day of her stay, she gave a large party for everyone who had been helpful to her in England. Once again, she invited not only aristocrats, but everyone, from the chief chamberlain to the stableboy. This gesture won her many hearts in England—and forfeited further sympathies in Vienna. The highlight of the party, and its
conclusion,
was a race for the Hohenembs Cup donated by the Empress (and named for one of Elisabeth’s aliases). Bay Middleton himself won the race and the cup.

At her return, the Viennese did not receive their Empress with any great affection. Everyone was now criticizing her, even the common people, who were disturbed at the stories of the great sums she spent abroad. The diplomats also joined in the general chorus of outrage. Countess de Jonghe, for example, wrote, “This woman is truly insane. If she does not turn Austria into a republic, its citizens must still be very good people. She lives
exclusively for her horses. It would be good fortune if she broke her arm in such a way that it would never mend.”
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Elisabeth spent the time between her return and her next trip to England in further riding exercises and in hunting at Göding, Pardubitz, and Gödöllö. In the summer of 1876, Bay Middleton came to Gödöllö as the Empress’s guest. The Emperor was also of the party, but he did not know how to deal with Middleton—quite aside from the fact that Franz Joseph did not speak English and Middleton did not speak German or Hungarian. Elisabeth’s Hungarian horsey friends were more jealous than the Emperor. Middleton soon found himself in a fairly aggressive rivalry particularly with Sisi’s former favorite (or whatever the correct word is for the delicate position of principal admirer), Count Niki Esterházy. For here in
Hungary,
Esterházy was the first and foremost huntsman. He pointed out to Middleton the position due him by virtue of his rank, and he jealously watched that Middleton did not lay claim to too much of the Empress’s time.

Everywhere in England and Ireland, Bay Middleton was the local hero, and he did not feel at ease in Gödöllö, in spite of Elisabeth’s favors. Surrounded by suspicious, even hostile faces, he felt abandoned. There was also his frustration in the presence of a beautiful woman who remained unattainable and yet, at times, flirted outrageously and, just as she did in other situations, took pleasure in his helplessness.

Finally, Bay broke loose. He traveled to Budapest, shook off his
companion
—and disappeared. Great agitation at the castle, extreme worry on the part of the Empress, until a telegram arrived from the Budapest police commissioner with the news that one Bay Middleton, without means, was being held at the police station. He had gone to a brothel and there—ignorant of the place and the language as he was—had promptly been robbed. He returned to Gödöllö a poor repentant sinner. His rivals had triumphed. The Empress was furious, feeling personally insulted. But Bay reacted cleverly: He made a joke of the whole story, laughed at himself with the others, allowed his country charm to do its work—and Elisabeth forgave him.
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Niki Esterházy had celebrated too soon. For the rest of his stay, the Scotsman rode out at the Empress’s side as if nothing at all had happened.

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At the end of January 1878, Elisabeth went to England again—this time to Cottesbrook in Northamptonshire. Again Bay Middleton was her guide. Elisabeth to Franz Joseph: “If only you were here, I say it at every hunt,
and how popular you would be thanks to your good horsemanship and your knowledge of hunting. But it would be dangerous, for you would not let Captain Middleton manage you and would leap over everything that is still being checked to see whether it is not too deep or too wide.”
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Crown Prince Rudolf, nineteen years old at that time, did not, however, believe that riding to hounds could contribute to the popularity of the imperial family. At least, before starting out on a grand tour in England, he assured everyone that he had no intention of imitating his mother. “Truly, in England I shall avoid participating in riding to hounds, our people do not consider it a very heroic deed to break one’s neck at it, and I care too much for my popularity to forfeit it for such matters.”
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It was a fact that Rudolf’s horsemanship was not equal to his mother’s.

Although, in the winter of 1878, mother and son were in England at the same time, they went their separate ways, as always. Elisabeth hunted in the Midlands, Rudolf underwent an exhausting schedule, inspecting and learning, in the company of his adored teacher, Professor Karl Menger, the economist. In England, he composed an anonymous pamphlet against the Austrian nobility in which he criticized the idle life of many aristocrats. It also alluded to the sport of riding and the exaggerated claims made for it. “In the late autumn, many gentlemen, as well as some ladies, travel to the hunts in Pardubitz, the principal center of the sport. The persecution of animals that takes place there in good weather is understood by a section of the nobility to be the more earnest part of life.”
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Rudolf’s few visits with his mother in England led to serious arguments concerning Bay Middleton. It was, surprisingly, ex-Queen Marie of Naples who passed on to the unsuspecting Crown Prince the gossip about a supposed affair between his mother and Middleton. She further aggravated the discord between mother and son by repeating to the Empress critical remarks the young Crown Prince had made. These, in turn, deeply hurt Elisabeth.

In her diary, Countess Festetics gave free rein to her anger at the Empress’s Bavarian family. The Empress was “always the victim of her brothers and sisters,” she wrote, and, “Her Majesty seems to me like Cinderella and her three wicked sisters. They are all full of envy! When they need something, they importune her. Curse and defame everything that her position gives her—but want to exploit all the advantages of her position for themselves.” The sisters used Elisabeth as a “plaything, and all unpleasantness—Everything that makes her heart heavy comes from them.”
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The Countess accused Marie of being jealous of her more beautiful,
more athletic sister and wanting Bay (presumably both as trainer and as admirer) for herself. “Our sister [as Marie was known in court jargon] flirts seriously with Bay and has invited him to her house,” Marie Festetics wrote to Ida Ferenczy, who had been left behind in Hungary.
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The Crown Prince was so outraged at what he heard that he grew abusive to Middleton—whereupon the latter was mortally offended.
Finally,
Countess Festetics, whom Rudolf had always liked very much, intervened and persuaded him to have a confidential talk with her. She told him, “I do not recognize your Imperial Highness at all—the English air does not become your Imperial Majesty.” He laughed, “and then, like a child, he poured out his heart, half-angry, half-sad, with tears in his eyes he said that he regretted having come to England—he had lost his most beautiful illusions and felt mortally hurt and unhappy.” To the lady-
in-waiting’s
dismayed question, Rudolf replied gruffly, “and you can ask me—you of all people—”

Marie Festetics: “There was no more, for I looked at him in such astonishment that it brought him to his senses. And then he continued more calmly and told me—the most infamous thing I have ever heard. I was speechless. But my astonishment and indignation at such lies must have been so evident that, before I could even open my mouth, he, as if to apologize, blurted out, ‘Aunt Marie told me’” Marie Festetics: “All the more vile, I said icily, although inside I was boiling.” Rudolf: “Yes, but why did she tell me if it is not true—and she was so nice—so good and really likes me … is all of it only a lie?”

The lady-in-waiting was so discreet that she did not confide the contents of the gossip to her diary: “I will not touch the matter itself—I would never forgive myself if I rescued such a story from oblivion. If the Empress knew
that!
terrible!”
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A vehement quarrel between the sisters ensued. They were never reconciled.

In this society of idle, mutually jealous people, for all practical purposes cut off from the rest of the world, the atmosphere grew so feverish that the Empress lost all interest in hunting and in horses for several days—and that was saying a great deal. In her outrage and anger at the
proliferating
quarrel, she refused to take part in several hunts and—as she did so frequently in difficult situations—took to her bed under the pretext of illness. She even found her decision quite appropriate: “Since I am not hunting for several days, people will say it is because of the Pope. This works out very well,” she wrote to her husband in Vienna at a time when Pope Pius IX had just died.
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