B008AITH44 EBOK (47 page)

From then on, whenever Rudolf came to visit, Middleton was not invited, to avoid any further explosions. As soon as Rudolf left his mother’s hunting lodge, matters went back to their accustomed ways. For the second time, Middleton won the cup donated and tendered by Elisabeth.

In all his letters to the Emperor, Rudolf gave no indication of any of these events. Quite the contrary: He sent his father reassurances, writing that Elisabeth “this year is riding so much more carefully and that Captain Middleton is leading more calmly.” On the other hand, he did not conceal his fear, “since I have seen the English fences and have heard so much talk of accidents.”
⁴³

These quarrels made Elisabeth lose her enthusiasm for hunting in
England.
From then on, she would be intent on avoiding her sister, who had a hunting lodge in Althorp as well and took part in all the large English hunts. She was determined in future to hunt in Ireland, with Bay
Middleton
but without the ex-Queen of Naples, in a region where it was unlikely that any member of the Imperial House would stop by on his travels.

Even aside from her excessive ambitions for her horsemanship, in the 1870s, Sisi managed to enrich Viennese court life with sensational behavior bordering on the bizarre. She had always liked surrounding herself with animals—with parrots and most especially with huge wolfhounds and greyhounds which, in spite of imperial protests, made their way into the innermost apartments of the Hofburg and never left Elisabeth’s side. True, she had never acquired the Bengal tiger and its cubs from the Berlin zoo that she wanted (
see here
), any more than, a few years earlier, she had been given the dancing bear she asked for (“it costs 700 guldens”).
⁴⁴
Instead, as if to protest the fact that her wishes had not been met, she bought a macaque. The monkey, like her pet dogs, frightened the ladies-in-waiting and the chambermaids, but it became little Valerie’s playmate, as the Empress wanted.

But soon difficulties arose. Crown Prince Rudolf wrote to his older friend, the zoologist Alfred Brehm, “Unfortunately this remarkably tame and very entertaining animal is quite sickly. Furthermore, it behaves so indecorously that it has become quite impossible to keep it in the room in the presence of ladies.” The monkey was “cashiered,” as Rudolf
mockingly
wrote, and taken to the zoo in Schönbrunn.

Next, Elisabeth asked her son to find her a new monkey, after first asking Brehm “which species of monkey was toughest as regards health and besides combines total good nature with decent behavior, and also does not make itself quite unbearable through bothersome screaming. She [the
Empress] further wished to know whether a female would be easier to keep indoors than a male.” It was not, however, entirely easy for the Crown Prince to burden the respected scholar with such wishes. “Please forgive my bothering you with this matter, but you are doing a great favor to one of the most diligent readers of your book.”
⁴⁵
When, after a time, the Empress finally gave up her “monkey passion,” as Marie Festetics wrote, not a few people at court were greatly relieved.

But soon a new interest emerged. The latest fad was Rustimo, a
blackamoor
the Shah of Persia (according to one of various versions) had sent as a gift. Sisi’s father, Duke Max of Bavaria, had amused himself by surrounding himself with four Negro boys to frighten the Munich
burghers.
He went so far as to have the four pagans solemnly christened in the Frauenkirche. Whether this deed had been done from a Christian
missionary
spirit or in a spirit of pure mischief remains open to question.

In this area, too, Elisabeth followed in her father’s footsteps. She turned the crippled Rustimo into Valerie’s playmate. She even had the two photographed together, so that no one at court would remain unaware of their shared games.

On Elisabeth’s express orders, Rustimo accompanied little Valerie on walks and drives; the ladies-in-waiting and the girl’s tutors could not get over their outrage at this whim. Landgravine Therese Fürstenberg, for example, wrote to her sister, “The Archduchess [Valerie] recently took the blackamoor along on the promenade, he was put in the carriage with the French teacher, who sat next to the heathen feeling shamed and sad; the Archduchess always gives candy to children along the road. But now none of them dared to come near her when they saw the black boy and tried in every way to avoid the monster and his bared teeth, so as to get to the candies; all this seemed a great joke to the little girl.”
⁴⁶

Even Marie Festetics found poor Rustimo “a horror … too big for a monkey, too little for a human being.”
⁴⁷
Elisabeth, however, was amused by the prompt effect of her provocation. Finally, the Empress had Rustimo christened, to invalidate all objections to the un-Christian association of her daughter with a heathen. Sisi to her mother: “Today was Rustimo’s christening in Valerie’s salon … Rudolf was godfather. It was solemn and ludicrous, there were tears and laughter. He himself was very moved and wept.”
⁴⁸
At Marie Wallersee’s wedding to Count Georg Larisch in Gödöllö, Archduchess Valerie appeared in the church next to Rustimo—truly a successfully perpetrated outrage.

For many years, Rustimo remained part of the imperial family’s inner circle. According to the ladies-in-waiting’s accusations, he grew conceited
and impertinent, spoiled by the beautiful Empress’s extravagant favors. In 1884, he was made “announcer to the bedchamber” but fell into disfavor only a year later. In 1890, he was pensioned, and in 1891, he was sent to the charity institution in Ybbs, where he died the very next year. Little is known about Rustimo; but that his life in Vienna was a tragic one is certain even without further facts. He was an attraction, a joke, a means for Elisabeth to pique those around her. When he no longer behaved as she wanted him to, she dropped him and sent him away—like the monkey whose manners were not up to scratch.

*

While the Empress spent her time feuding with relatives, practicing her riding, nurturing her beauty, and complaining of boredom, Austrian
soldiers
were fighting partisans in Bosnia. At the Congress of Berlin, with Bismarck’s support, Andrássy had won the right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina (which were under Turkish rule). This maneuver, piled on the serious differences created during the Crimean War, seriously angered czarist Russia. Under Andrássy’s influence, Elisabeth, too, harbored no friendly feelings for the Russians. After the occupation, she wrote to her husband, “Just do not send too many Russophiles to Bosnia, such as Croatians, Bohemians, etc.”
⁴⁹
These words reflect her deep repugnance to all Slavs, and once again especially the Czechs.

The Austrian troops were received not as rescuing angels and saviors from the Turkish yoke, but as enemies. The number of dead and wounded rose from day to day. Once again emergency hospitals were set up, including one at Schönbrunn.

Elisabeth visited the wounded warriors. “Truly like an angel of mercy she went from bed to bed,” Marie Festetics wrote. “I saw the tears trickling down the faces of the men;—no complaints crossed their lips! no word of discouragement! yes, they said—that they were
not
suffering! … and with glowing eyes they followed her movements and blessed her and thanked her and asked for
nothing!
”

Marie Festetics believed herself to be in agreement with the Empress when she wrote the following skeptical sentences in her diary. “I bow to this humanity that risks its life for a concept—to be beaten or shot into a cripple…. And almost ashamed, I ask myself—and we? what sacrifices do we bring? With our abundance, we graciously approach the beds of these half-dead men and ask whether the wounds hurt? and hand them a cigar or a friendly word to lessen the pain?—no! reflection is required here and the question who ‘the great one’ is?” The loyal lady-in-waiting
concluded 
these considerations with an appreciation of the Empress: “but the Empress—she understands.”
⁵⁰

But these moments of understanding did not last long. A mere two days later, Marie Festetics noted with resignation, “Life goes on! Hunting, riding academy—a great gathering there—dinners—teas. During all this, many an anxious worry, and always my mind turns to the wounded while I am playing the piano at the riding academy as everyone frolics in pleasure and merriment…. The Empress is charming in her efforts to entertain her guests!”
⁵¹

*

Elisabeth’s personality was so persuasive that she transformed even her most severe critics into admirers when she appeared officially as the
Empress
—as she did at the court ball of 1879. At the time, the Emperor was forty-eight years old and, according to Hübner, looked “tired and
noticeably
aged. ‘I am growing old‚’ he said with a melancholy note, ‘my memory is going.’” By contrast, the Empress, forty-one years old, was, again according to Hübner, “very beautiful, especially seen at a distance very poetical with her magnificent hair, which fell below her shoulders down to her waist. An empress to her fingertips.”
⁵²
But the hours Elisabeth spent “in harness,” in the diamond-embroidered state gown, a tiara on her artfully dressed hair, grew more and more infrequent.

In the meantime, preparations for the trip to Ireland claimed most of Sisi’s time. Nine of her horses, especially the expensive English ones Middleton had bought for her, were in England, where they were being exercised. But not even these horses were suitable for Irish conditions. On that island, jumps were taken primarily over earth embankments rather than over the high English fences. The horses had therefore to be retrained, and for this purpose they were shipped to a stable in Ireland. The
reschooling
of the high-bred horses, used to the Empress’s slight weight, by Irish horsemen was so difficult that three of the sinfully expensive hunters perished. Middleton, who managed Elisabeth’s stables in England and Ireland, provided replacements. The expenditure could hardly remain a secret, coming as it did at the time of the occupation struggles in Bosnia.

Most of the time, the Emperor was alone in Vienna. He rose at four in the morning and took all his meals alone, often quite informally while working at his desk. Consternation at the Emperor’s loneliness was
universal,
as was condemnation of the Empress. Count Hübner’s diary discusses Franz Joseph’s meager distractions. “Frequently, he utilizes the last hours of the day to drive to Laxenburg. He goes there all alone, and alone he
goes walking in the park. One sees this Prince, made for family life, reduced to solitude by the absence of the Empress, whom he still loves passionately.”
⁵³

Count Crenneville and his friends also joined the universal lamentations about the Empress. “I like neither the external nor the internal, and certainly not the innermost affairs. Poor Austria, poor Emperor! He really deserves a better fate, for no one can dispute many of his outstanding traits. His greatest misfortune occurred in 1854. Without this, perhaps many things would have been avoided.”
⁵⁴
The mention of 1854 referred, of course, to the Emperor’s marriage to Elisabeth. And on another occasion: “The papers already carry the news that the Empress is traveling to Ireland. For the Emperor’s birthday, she came to Schönbrunn for not quite
twenty-four
hours; for the feast of Corpus Christi, she can find neither time nor inclination to make the Viennese happy by her presence!”

And:

Once again, the loyal lady-in-waiting Marie Festetics did everything in her power to defend her mistress. “She needs absolute freedom, the quiet that comes with independence—a release from everything of this world that causes her worry and responsibility—that delivers her from the small duties, which she lacks the self-command to fulfill, and the omission of which in turn causes her to have scruples.”
⁵⁶
Nevertheless, Sisi’s letters make no mention of scruples. Only once is there a brief hint that Elisabeth’s passion for riding might be rooted in defiance of the Emperor who, after 1867, made her stay away from politics. In any case, her reproaches express great annoyance: “I no longer interfere in politics, but in these matters [having to do with horses], I do insist on having a voice.”
⁵⁷

It was surely no accident that Elisabeth’s single-minded preoccupation with hunting and riding coincided with the period when Andrássy, as imperial and royal foreign minister, was watched at every step—especially
in the fear that, as had happened in 1866–1867, Andrássy would again engage the Empress for his purposes. Apparently at the Emperor’s wish, Elisabeth avoided even the appearance of political activity—and in her way continued to be outrageous by occupying herself entirely and
exclusively
with horses.