Remember Me (7 page)

Triebschen was a square house on top of a hillside, over which the trees waved like great fans of seaweed. In the garden of that villa it was possible once more to talk of important things. It was even possible, or so he hoped, to show by Paul’s presence, that Wagner might keep his Cosima. He had nothing against Cosima except that she was there and had a tendency to tell him what to do politically. She was the first of the over-weening women, but she was a great one. Ludwig wanted to show that he quite understood the situation, having a full life of his own. But it did not quite work that way.

It was pleasant to talk to the Master, pleasanter still to put him in his place, and to show that the greatness of his accomplishment was dependent solely upon the greatness of his patron. While he talked, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Paul lurking in the garden. Yet all the time, somewhere in a high cool room inside, Cosima was
waiting
to laugh at him once he had gone. He was aware of that. The Master was not so great as his works. There was something specious even at Triebschen. Paul
became
more mortal and less like Lohengrin every day.

So far he had been able to hide behind the shield of his public popularity. He returned to Munich almost with relief, as a man returns to his own work, after turning his hand to something a little beyond him.

But as he drove from the station to the palace, for the first time in his life the crowds booed him.

It was an enormous shock, for public popularity was one last refuge he had taken for granted, hit directly by a bomb.

He shrank into himself, feeling as though he had been slapped. His carriage had no roof. There was nowhere to hide. He could only sit erect and smile and wave.

His grandfather, Ludwig I, had told him that all crowds were treacherous, but until now he had not believed it. He felt coldly angry. He was their King. They had no right to boo. It was disloyal. For the moment he felt confused. The world fell around his ears.

There was no Lohengrin. There was only that
miserable
creature Paul; the hatred of the crowds, and a memory of Wagner not as he was now, plump with
success
at Triebschen, but as he had first seen him, a squat, ugly man with the lolling head of a dwarf, in smelly clothes, who reeked of bad tobacco and had an evil
temper
. As usual, whenever he felt warm towards it, his world turned sour.

He fled to Roseninsel, near Berg. There he had
fireworks
let off in the sky. The sky was not dark enough for them. It was instead suffused with the unattainable Alpenglow. The rockets sizzled up into the sky, following irregular courses, and burst like immortelles, shedding their dry petals of flame downward to the lake. It was pretty. Yet even there he was not safe from those booing crowds, nor from his ministers. What did they want of
him? Against the pale sky, the glow of the rockets seemed timid and ineffectual. But as the night grew darker, the rockets seemed to shoot higher, and the great spluttering wheels began to burn like nebulae.

It was watching them, as some fell into the lake, but others fused with the sky to become invisible, that he had an insight. For a moment it seemed a true one. One can save one’s self by self-abnegation, and therefore he would abdicate. That way he would free his spirit from the petty tyranny of men, and so become truly pure. Another rocket exploded like the taut bell of a hot
mushroom
, and splayed out its saffron fingers in the sunburst of Louis XIV. The fingers merged into darkness. That was what he would do. He would go up gloriously in fire and disappear. They should not boo him again in Munich. They should never have the chance to boo him anywhere else. It was the first time he threatened to abdicate: there would be others.

Paul came up to him, but Ludwig did not speak, though he knew Paul was there. The starlight, the
darkness
, the shadows, and the abrupt, distant glare of the rockets showed him that Paul was only a man with a heavy and inert face. His eyes gleamed in the darkness, besides, with the look, slightly crafty and slightly
contemptuous
, of a favourite who is about to lose favour, of a white puppy afraid to be kicked. He paid no attention to Paul. He never would again.

As he watched the sky over the lake, a great burden fell from him like a cloak. He would abdicate, and his brother Otto would be King. Otto was nothing. Otto would not interfere with him in any way. He would retreat to the mountains where the peasants were loyal, and Otto might rule in Munich if he wished. He would continue to send Wagner money, for the great work must
go on, but otherwise he would cast Wagner loose, to float like an abandoned swanboat on the water.
Lohengrin
would reach shore by himself.

And yet, even as he made that decision for the first time, he knew he would not really do it. He had
remembered
something about his brother Otto that should not have forced its way up from the past. He shut his eyes. He remembered it too well.

*

It had happened years ago. He had always loved Otto. He always would. But that did not mean he trusted him. He had learned to distrust him many years ago, when they were both children, at Berchtesgaden, in the late 1850’s.

The bright, autonomous kingdom of childhood, which has but one occupant, who is ruler and subject both, is dangerous training for a king. To Ludwig, even then, Otto presumed.

Ludwig had decided that later on in the day they would act out
Maria
Stuart,
by the poet Schiller. Otto could have his head chopped off, after a certain amount of suffering, and Ludwig would be an executioner in yellow boots. That Ludwig should have his head chopped off, even in a play, was unthinkable. Otto knew that. He agreed to be Maria Stuart. The tortures she had to
undergo
were truly terrible. They had decided to hold the execution itself in the greenhouse. The door to the
greenhouse
was of rotten wood, the paint hanging from it like a cluster of bluebottles. The door was very narrow.

The two brothers paused to look at it. It presented a certain problem.

“I shall go first,” Otto announced nervously. “I am Maria Stuart.”

Ludwig was aware of the beating of his heart. He had
been in a temper all day. He felt a handkerchief in his pocket.

“You aren’t anybody,” he said. “You’re only my younger brother.”

Otto was stubborn. He moved towards the greenhouse door and reached for the handle.

Ludwig leaped forward instinctively. He could not help himself. Part of him knew what he was doing and part of him did not. He held Otto by the neck and
pinioned
his arms. It gave him the thrill of power, that strangely sexual delight, to do so. Otto began to scream. Ludwig whipped out the handkerchief, tied it round Otto’s neck, shoved a garden stake through it, and began to twist.

“You are my subject. You must obey me,” he chanted, turning the stick. Otto’s face was shocked and blue, but he made no sound.

Otto was finally saved by their tutors, who had heard the scuffle. Ludwig tried to shake them off.

“He is my vassal. It is none of your business.”

The tutors pulled them apart. Ludwig felt his head clear, and he faced reality as though it were a firing squad. He was very sorry. He loved Otto. But he would never trust him again, nor would he ever go to Berchtesgaden willingly. After all, Henry IV went to Canossa only once.

Besides there were other things about Otto, that made the thought of abdication impossible. They were not things he liked to think about, but they were not things he could ever forget, either. If a king abdicates, then he is no longer a king. A king without a throne is merely pitiable. That was not the way. He badly needed advice.

But whom could he ask for it? Wagner would answer, but only out of self-interest. There was no one. He turned to one of the grooms for diversion, a man named
Kunsberg
.
It was only peasants he could trust. Paul sent him a last miserable letter of farewell. He left it unanswered. It was indeed farewell.

Kunsberg lasted a week. When it was over, Ludwig was glad. At least he had had the wisdom never to allow Kunsberg into the wintergarden. No one from now on should sully that place.

Late at night, habitually, tired of pacing his rooms, he unlocked the door behind the curtain, stepped inside, locked the door behind him, and without turning on the gasoliers or lighting the candles, skirted the borders of the little lake, went to the grotto, and sat in the humid darkness, listening to the secretive movements of the ferns, as they taught each other how to grow. Only a few driblets of water fell irregularly from a faulty washer. The cascade down the rocks of the grotto had been turned off. He turned it on, and watched the water glitter in the gloom. The skiff rocked on the lake. Apart from that it was very silent. The whole hostile city was asleep below him. He did not understand it. He was scarcely
twenty-two
. At twenty-one nothing could be as final as this. There must be a way to go on.

He closed his eyes, but there was no face before him any longer. If he could not have love, then he would have approval. If Wagner and Paul could shut him out from the ultimate transfiguration he needed, because of a secret they had about women, then he would learn the secret, too. He would marry, and then he would be like other people, and they would have to let him in at last. It was the only thing he could do, for even Kunsberg had not been Tell.

If he married, the people would love him again, and he could always keep his single self apart. Dynastic
marriages
need not be intimate. It took but one night to
produce an heir. The problem was solved. No one would boo him again. He called for a servant and had the lights put on. He would keep vigil here in the wintergarden all night long. If he married he would be alone no longer. In the thought of that, solitude suddenly became precious once more, so he sat and savoured it.

I
f woman there was to be, then she must resemble the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, his cousin. Perhaps in this he was right, for the Empress Elizabeth and he were very much alike. She was a legend, too. He must have another from the same nest.

But the Empress Elizabeth was anomalous. Like Marie Antoinette, she was to die by violence, but unlike Marie Antoinette, all her life she acted as though she knew it. Had the great royal martyrs survived, we should think far differently of them than we do now. Maria Stuart was a foolish and ruthless giantess. Lady Jane Grey was a frightened child too ambitious to deserve our pity. Marie Antoinette was stubborn and resentful. It is only the minor royal houses which have given beauties to the world. The Empress Elizabeth was a Wittelsbach, and certainly a beauty. She had some of Ludwig’s good looks and unreal disposition. And she, too, was a legend in her own time, particularly to herself.

Unfortunately legends have the uncomfortable ability to disbelieve in each other, which is perhaps why they understand each other so well. Yet for Sisi he had a
certain
reverence. In his opinion she was what women ought to be, for to him women were distant unreal legends, made out of Meissen or white bisque from
Nymphenberg
.
Perhaps he was right. Could we live in a fragile world of porcelain women, we would all willingly be
vitrified
. Alas, the fragile woman is an invention of the male mind, for no man can know what a woman is when she sits alone, or what she talks about with other women. The true barrier between the sexes is sexual vanity, that must always fear what it does not understand.

There was something about Sisi he could not quite define and which made him uneasy. Women hate the ideal world and try to bring it down in tinkling mockery. Women love only the present. They hate the future and forget the past. Therefore he approached the problem of women warily. Besides the problem was not one of women. The problem, as laid before him by his ministers, his relations, and his common sense, was one of marriage. And marriage is the end of youth: to the boyish, it is as though the doors of childhood closed behind them for the last time. They can hear the bolts shoot home.

But for kings marriage is an appurtenance of the strategy of state. Indeed, the moment was propitious. He had been a bachelor king for two years, and that was long enough. He wanted to see women again. He wanted to see what they were like.

The Empress Elizabeth was the daughter of Duke Max in Bayern, his uncle. There was also a younger daughter, Sophie, in the shadow of her glamorous sister, but no doubt longing for an advantageous marriage too. To well-brought-up young ladies, no other career was
possible
. Sophie and her family lived at Possenhofen, across the lake from Berg. He ordered the carriage and set out.

His family did not understand him, which chiefly meant that they were baffled because his desires were not the same as theirs. He found it amusing to go to
Possenhofen
wanting something they wanted him to want. It
might even make them like him. Now that he went to see the women, they would open out their intimacy for him, like the folding doors to a dining-room, and would allow him a peep at the feast inside. He knew perfectly well that as far as Possenhofen was concerned, he was a good catch.

He had always wished that trumpets might go before him when he rode. He could not achieve that, but he did have a state coach readied, four piebald horses attached, several footmen summoned, and an equerry was sent posting ahead. He decided to go in state, and to watch their eyes sparkle with hunger like the hard black eyes of mice. It was delightful, for it was pleasant sometimes to be smaller than one was and to do less than one could.

The carriage lumbered through the cold woods. Steam rose from the horses’ nostrils. Above the rumble of the wheels he could hear the regular slap of the grooms’ buttocks as they hit their saddles. He was a boy of
twenty-two
, and unless its power be absolute, royalty matures late, if at all.

At last the carriage jounced into the grounds of
Possenhofen
. From the window he could see the small turrets of Berg on the other side of the lake. It was like looking across the water at himself, and he rather liked what he saw. There was a slight rain and the drops against the window-pane were agreeable.

A footman shot up an umbrella, opened the door, and lowered the carriage steps. Ludwig got out. Since Sophie’s sister was Empress of Austria, in compliment to her he had worn Austrian uniform. It suited him well. He had just had his hair curled, and the umbrella was far from wide. He scurried for the door, carrying his plumed helmet under his arm. The rain cheered him up.

Sophie was in the drawing-room whose windows
overlooked
the lake. Her mother, his aunt, and Sisi were also there, drawn up as for review. He lurched nimbly into the room and smiled at them. They sat clustered as though about to be painted by Winterhalter. That would be Elizabeth’s touch. It was quite clear that she nowhere enjoyed being Empress of Austria so much as at
Possenhofen
, among her relatives. Her eyes had the powerful look of a woman who has made a fortunate marriage.

He stayed an hour and enjoyed himself very much. It was a little boring, but easy to do. Besides, it was fun to watch Aunt Ludovica slowly trying to puzzle things out in her head. For her, marrying her daughters off must be a little like playing going to Jerusalem, but with thrones instead of chairs. There were never enough to go round. It was Elizabeth’s fault, of course: if her marriage had not had such a high glitter, Sophie might long ago have found an acceptable suitor. Ludwig was highly
entertained
and only twice eyed the clock.

Then he noticed Sophie looking at him with the
stubborn
look of a child peering into the window of a candy shop. It made him uneasy. He made a mental note to send her flowers.

He glanced at his hat and his gloves, which he had placed on the floor beside him when he sat down. There must be a low draught in the room, for the plumes on the helmet eddied like a sea plant. The look in Sophie’s eyes had disturbed him. He made up his mind to go. He would have liked to hear her sing, which was one of her more delicate accomplishments, but if he stayed much longer, she would, and then he would have to stay too long. He got up and left Aunt Ludovica to her
matrimonial
cobwebs.

The footman held forward the umbrella, but he
refused
it. The drawing-room had been too warm, and his
curls were already unset. He walked through the light spring rain and re-entered the coach, humming to
himself
, and when he thought over how they had sat there, he was happy with laughter. He looked out the window as the coach rumbled away. Two little lapdogs tumbled down the terrace stairs and stood uncertainly on the wet grass, as though trying to decide what size they were. They were fluffy, like young girls. Women would not be too difficult. He closed his eyes and opened them again only when the coach pulled in to Berg.

At Possenhofen there was a lull after he had gone. Then Sisi sat back on the sofa and sniffed the air.

“So much chypre,” she said. “He must bathe in it.”

Aunt Ludovica frowned and rebuked her.

“Nonsense, you would have thought it excessive half an hour ago yourself,” said Sisi.

Sophie looked pale. Then she caught her sister’s eye, and the two of them burst into fits of giggles.

“He’s only a boy, after all,” said Aunt Ludovica. She was bewildered.

“And Sophie shall be Queen of Bavaria,” said Sisi. The two sisters went off into the giggles again.

Aunt Ludovica stirred uneasily. It was all very well to think such things, and even to plan them, but they should not be stated so light-heartedly.

Back at Berg Ludwig sat in the darkness of his study and watched the evening turn to velvet, so that in the light from the
schloss
the discontinuous lines of the rain were like silver embroidery being invisibly woven. After all, he was King, and women love a king. They can always be depended upon to support both the Church and the monarchy. He had forgotten that.

It had been a most revealing day. It had been a test. With the one test behind him, now he felt better about
undergoing the second. The ministers wished him to make a tour of the kingdom, so now he would agree. Possenhofen had shown him how easy it was to please others, so long as his emotions were not involved. He thought about that. The rain had grown thinner. The farther shore of the lake was now dimly visible, and the pale lights of Possenhofen, too. He felt restless. He would make his progress through Bavaria, as his councillors wished. He could almost see the look of disappointment on their faces, when he would tell them. It would leave them with nothing else to grumble about.

So he spent a happy night, for he had learned the secret he had not known before. The women had taught it to him, for after all, women have much to teach. It was that you may do what you will, provided you show only that part of you which your audience covets for itself, and therefore imagines that it understands. He had learnt the secret of the survival of kings. To be unchanging, one must appear to be a chameleon. To see if he was right, he had to take the tour. And the way to please women was to flatter them and to give them the thing, but never the nature of the thing, they wanted.

He went on the tour. It did not teach him as much as he thought it did, for he read too much. His favourite reading was in court memoirs, and as a result his concept of kingship was already too French. It made him out of date, before he had even caught up with the present. But he could not know that.

He liked Nuremberg best. They cheered him in Nuremberg. That completely erased the fact that he had been booed in Munich. That part of him which thirsted for attention, the Achilles heel of aristocrats, was
profoundly
soothed. As he drove through the streets, dimly he perceived the shadowy figure of Sophie, as chatelaine
to public approval. Normalcy held the keys. Therefore normal he would be. As he passed along, it was almost as though the crowds expected to see somebody beside him, and indeed he half expected it himself. As the crowds cheered him, it was as though the person beside him slowly took form, not in features, but in the gestures of the consort whom the crowd desired. Monarchs, in their origin, like Gods in heaven, come in pairs. Rulers are parents to the state. The crowds were, of course,
applauding
him; but the imaginary consort they evoked, so long as she could be limited to the gestures of a gracious public appearance, would warm the glow that warmed him. If it be wise, royalty will always keep itself a mirror to the populace, protected from them by a thin coating of similarity which allows the public to cheer its own image. Given that, and behind the glass they may do as they please. Very well. He would set a real mirror up before them.

Sitting inside himself, jolting over the cobbled streets, he could very well see what these people wanted and what they were applauding. And as he felt his body and
outward
appearance adapt to circumstances, he began to perceive a new way to be invulnerable. Insects protect themselves by mimicry. So should he. As an actress tours the provinces before coming into London, so he toured Würzburg, Aschaffenburg, and the battlefields round Kissingen, before coming in to Munich. And he wrote to Sophie. If she was to be his ally, if she was to give that presence evoked by the crowds a shape, then she must be made into a friend. She seemed docile and agreeable, and perhaps even a little colourless. All the better: he did not think about her very much.

This was his kingdom. It was also his opera. In
receiving
its applause, and in playing the king it wanted,
he got the same selfless thrill that Wagner seemed to experience over his copying desk. He determined that if he married Sophie, their public life would be impeccable. It did not occur to him that they would have to have a private life as well. Heirs did not come out of bottles.

He was so taken up with this vision of a toy marriage, that he forgot that kings can also be the victims of their own state machinery, which once they put it in motion, rolls over them like a juggernaut. The announcement of his engagement shocked him profoundly. It was too actual. The appearance was all very well, but reality was like a dash of cold water. It brought him to his senses.

The engagement was timed for the 1st of January 1867, as though it were a good intention. Perhaps it was, but whose? As he had foreseen, the public loved it. What made him sadder was that his relatives were so easily satisfied. It made him feel like an actor triumphing in an inferior play. Contempt for the author is quite salutary: contempt for the audience makes their applause too meaningless to be really worth while.

He had only to speak his lines properly, to be free of censure forever. It showed how meaningless censure was. He had merely to simulate reality, and they took it for the real thing. It made him smile, but the smile became sad.

For people will pay anything to be taken out of
themselves
, so long as in the process they are not forced to the effort of understanding anybody else. It was so easy. Yet the excitement of the opening night was one thing, but how does the actor amuse himself during the 80th, 90th, or 500th performance? Surely by then he would grow a little bored. Ludwig thought that over. He looked ahead into the future, and saw it blocked off by a perpetual marriage. Everything first rate was a parody of itself,
but why was that so? He decided to go to the theatre to find out.

The party given for the announcement of the
engagement
was dull. After the speech itself, except for the flush of triumph on Sophie’s face, which amused him, there was the problem of what to do next. The problem was easily solved at first. It was necessary that they appear in public in order to make the best use of their new
popularity
. Goodness knows how many public monuments and civic ceremonials we owe to the need felt by royalty for some excuse to show itself in public barricaded behind the safety of an event. In the absence of such occasions, the theatre made an admirable substitute.