Francis Gribble
1914
NOTE |
The death by suicide of the Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria prompted intense speculation and conspiracy theories blaming everyone from the Freemasons to the Emperor Franz Joseph, his father, for an imagined murder. The brief summary of the life and death of Rudolf provided by Francis Gribble in his 1914 biography of Franz Joseph, while somewhat conspiratorial, laid out all of the essential facts and the major conspiracies, in terms that set the standard for all future versions. Indeed, the 2017 book Twilight of Empire, about the death of Rudolf, was at heart little more than a magnified version of these chapters, with a more credulous acceptance of conspiracy.
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CHAPTER XX.
The Crown Prince Rudolph—His quarrel with the German Emperor—His affability and his hauteur—A spoiled child—His search for a wife—Marriage to Princess Stephanie—Disappointment and disillusion—Stephanie’s book—“A long, long, terrible night has gone by for me”—Mary Vetsera and her family—How Mary Vetsera was taken first to the Hofburg and thence to Meyerling.
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The name Rudolph had not been borne by a Habsburg ruler for five hundred years. A curious fatality seemed to attach to it, and probably had inspired a superstitious fear of it. Rudolph II. had died mad. Rudolph III. and Rudolph IV. had died young—the one at twenty-seven and the other at twenty-six. But people had ceased, as it seemed with good reason, to think of such ominous things; and the Crown Prince Rudolph inspired great hopes as well as great affection.
That he was really a degenerate, touched by the hereditary taint, is hardly, indeed, to be doubted; but the symptoms of degeneracy were not conspicuous, and, on the whole, passed unobserved. He must be classed with the brilliant Habsburgs, or, at least, among those who had literary and artistic tastes, which they cultivated, and were proud of. He travelled, and wrote a book about his travels; he edited a monumental work on the scenic beauties of the Austrian Empire; he consorted, on very affable terms, with artists and men of letters. He was also one of the friends of the late King Edward, who remarked of him that he was a good German—"at all events in the sense of being anti-Prussian”; and he showed character in a passage-at-arms with the German Emperor, who spoke contemptuously of his preoccupation with the fine arts:
That he was really a degenerate, touched by the hereditary taint, is hardly, indeed, to be doubted; but the symptoms of degeneracy were not conspicuous, and, on the whole, passed unobserved. He must be classed with the brilliant Habsburgs, or, at least, among those who had literary and artistic tastes, which they cultivated, and were proud of. He travelled, and wrote a book about his travels; he edited a monumental work on the scenic beauties of the Austrian Empire; he consorted, on very affable terms, with artists and men of letters. He was also one of the friends of the late King Edward, who remarked of him that he was a good German—"at all events in the sense of being anti-Prussian”; and he showed character in a passage-at-arms with the German Emperor, who spoke contemptuously of his preoccupation with the fine arts:
“Nonsense of that sort,” the Emperor is reported to have said, “is unworthy of a soldier and a Crown Prince.”
“There is only one thing,” Rudolph is reported to have replied, “which is unworthy of a Crown Prince, and that is to aspire to the throne during his father’s life-time.”
And yet, when Countess Marie Larisch came to tell what she knew of the Meyerling tragedy, her “secret” was to the effect that Rudolph himself had not only aspired to, but also conspired for, the throne of Hungary during Francis Joseph’s lifetime. But neither story can be said to disprove the other; for one can discover no grounds for crediting Rudolph with firm and consistent principles.
He was capable of affability; but he was also capable of hauteur. One might compare him, as one might compare a good many of the Habsburgs, to a poker which will unbend itself, but declines to be unbent by others. Some workmen employed in the Palace discovered that, when he came among them, as a child, and talked to them while they were engaged in decorations and repairs. “Well, what is your name, young fellow?” they presumed to ask him; and the little boy drew himself up. “Papa and mamma call me Rudolph,” he answered. “Other people call me Monseigneur.” He was young enough for the snub to amuse without giving pain. Most likely the workmen declared him to be whatever is the German for “a chip of the old block.” At any rate he grew up to be popular with people who did not know him, or only knew him slightly. He was “unser Rudi,” just as the German Emperor Frederick was “unser Fritz.”
Still, he was a spoiled child, and precociously cynical; and perhaps, in view of the way in which he was brought up, it would have been hard for him to be anything else. The legend of his mother’s devotion to him is found at the circumference of his circle, but cannot be traced to its centre. From an early age, he saw and understood too much for innocence. Among other things he saw the “go-between,” and knew for what purpose she went between. There was no example before his eyes to lead him to look upon happiness in marriage as an easily attainable ideal; and he held women cheap, because so many of them made themselves cheap with him. One of Countess Marie’s stories is to the effect that she boxed his ears for laughing at “love-sick girls,” and boasting of his conquests, and saying of a certain Elizabeth T-----: ”The silly goose thinks I adore her, and so I can do anything I like with her.”
It was, therefore, as a young man who had already lost his illusions that Rudolph set out m search of a wife. The story has been told that another lady travelled with him as a provisional companion while he was looking for a wife, and was, at least once, caught in his company in compromising circumstances by his prospective mother-in-law. He was too eligible a parti for any prospective mother-inlaw to attach more importance than she could help to such a contretemps; and after Rudolph had rejected the suit of Princess Mathilde of Saxony, on the ground that her style of beauty was of too luxuriant an effulgence, then, “weary,” to quote Countess Marie, “of a choice of many evils, he decided to take the least of them, as represented by the Princess Stéphanie of Belgium.” And Stéphanie said, or is said to have said, “He asked me for my hand so prettily that I could not possibly refuse it to him.”
That in spite of the compromising discovery of the provisional lady companion in his rooms. His manner must indeed have been charming if it removed the impression of that surprise; but Rudolph could be fascinating when he chose, and his ready wit may have prompted a plausible explanation. Moreover, Stéphanie was little more than a child—too young to understand; and her father, Leopold II., was not a man into whose calculations either sentiment or morality entered. We all know him as the King who neglected the Austrian Archduchess to whom he was married for such persons as Cleo de Merode and the Baroness Vaughan; and he may well have said to himself that he saw no reason why his daughter should expect to be any happier in her marriage than his wife, or why his younger daughter should expect to be any happier in her marriage than her elder sister.
It is notorious, at any rate, that no love was ever lost between Leopold and either of his daughters. The marriages of both of them were failures; and anyone who has ever lived in Brussels knows how many stories are current there as to his callous indifference to their matrimonial calamities. Again and again the story ran round Brussels that Princess Louise of Saxe-Coburg had run away from her husband and taken refuge at Laeken, and that her eyes were not only red but black: that Philip of Saxe-Coburg, in fact, had been knocking her about, and that she had vowed, with tears streaming down her cheeks, that nothing would induce her to return to him. But Leopold always sent her back; for why—one pictures him asking—should his daughter Louise expect to be any happier than his wife Henrietta, and why should his son-in-law be expected to behave any better than he himself behaved? No doubt there was logic of a kind—though not of the best kind—in the argument. No doubt, too, the same logic was brought into play when Stéphanie’s marriage was arranged.
Countess Marie protests that Stéphanie was plain, and had no style. She speaks of her red arms, her deplorable figure, her unbecomingly dressed hair; but that is not the verdict of contemporary Brussels, where she was to be seen daily in the Park and the streets. What Brussels remembers is a little girl— a “flapper,” as people say nowadays—simple and exceedingly attractive: a little girl who reminded Brussels of a Dresden china statuette; a little girl in short frocks, with her hair hanging down her back. She was not grown up, Brussels declares, when she was married; she was only dressed to look as if she were grown up. She was put into long skirts, and her hair was done up, du jour au lendemain, before the proper time, because this chance of a brilliant marriage had suddenly come her way.
Presumably there was something of the gawkiness of the schoolgirl about her when she was thus first dressed as a woman. Presumably that gawkiness did not entirely vanish in the course of the journey from Brussels to Vienna, where she was certain, as a foreigner, to encounter far more captious criticism; Vienna being nearly as chic as Paris, quite as quizzical in a heavier way, and decidedly less disposed to make smooth the path of the stranger. Stéphanie, in short, must at first have seemed a little “provincial” to the Viennese; and there were plenty of Viennese ladies—Palast Damen and others—whose cue it was to make the worst of her, and to rejoice that, as Rudolph had married such a wife, “there was no possibility,” to quote Countess Marie, “of his ever becoming a model husband.”
Assuredly he did not become one, and there does not even seem to have been an interlude of sunshine before the gathering of the clouds. Even the daughter presently born to the Archduke and the Archduchess is said to have been a cause of contention between them; and Stéphanie, with that passion for self-expression which she shared with almost every member of the House of Habsburg except Francis Joseph, has written out and published a confession of the emotions which her experiences of marriage brought her, and the lessons which she drew from them. This is the essential passage:--
He was capable of affability; but he was also capable of hauteur. One might compare him, as one might compare a good many of the Habsburgs, to a poker which will unbend itself, but declines to be unbent by others. Some workmen employed in the Palace discovered that, when he came among them, as a child, and talked to them while they were engaged in decorations and repairs. “Well, what is your name, young fellow?” they presumed to ask him; and the little boy drew himself up. “Papa and mamma call me Rudolph,” he answered. “Other people call me Monseigneur.” He was young enough for the snub to amuse without giving pain. Most likely the workmen declared him to be whatever is the German for “a chip of the old block.” At any rate he grew up to be popular with people who did not know him, or only knew him slightly. He was “unser Rudi,” just as the German Emperor Frederick was “unser Fritz.”
Still, he was a spoiled child, and precociously cynical; and perhaps, in view of the way in which he was brought up, it would have been hard for him to be anything else. The legend of his mother’s devotion to him is found at the circumference of his circle, but cannot be traced to its centre. From an early age, he saw and understood too much for innocence. Among other things he saw the “go-between,” and knew for what purpose she went between. There was no example before his eyes to lead him to look upon happiness in marriage as an easily attainable ideal; and he held women cheap, because so many of them made themselves cheap with him. One of Countess Marie’s stories is to the effect that she boxed his ears for laughing at “love-sick girls,” and boasting of his conquests, and saying of a certain Elizabeth T-----: ”The silly goose thinks I adore her, and so I can do anything I like with her.”
It was, therefore, as a young man who had already lost his illusions that Rudolph set out m search of a wife. The story has been told that another lady travelled with him as a provisional companion while he was looking for a wife, and was, at least once, caught in his company in compromising circumstances by his prospective mother-in-law. He was too eligible a parti for any prospective mother-inlaw to attach more importance than she could help to such a contretemps; and after Rudolph had rejected the suit of Princess Mathilde of Saxony, on the ground that her style of beauty was of too luxuriant an effulgence, then, “weary,” to quote Countess Marie, “of a choice of many evils, he decided to take the least of them, as represented by the Princess Stéphanie of Belgium.” And Stéphanie said, or is said to have said, “He asked me for my hand so prettily that I could not possibly refuse it to him.”
That in spite of the compromising discovery of the provisional lady companion in his rooms. His manner must indeed have been charming if it removed the impression of that surprise; but Rudolph could be fascinating when he chose, and his ready wit may have prompted a plausible explanation. Moreover, Stéphanie was little more than a child—too young to understand; and her father, Leopold II., was not a man into whose calculations either sentiment or morality entered. We all know him as the King who neglected the Austrian Archduchess to whom he was married for such persons as Cleo de Merode and the Baroness Vaughan; and he may well have said to himself that he saw no reason why his daughter should expect to be any happier in her marriage than his wife, or why his younger daughter should expect to be any happier in her marriage than her elder sister.
It is notorious, at any rate, that no love was ever lost between Leopold and either of his daughters. The marriages of both of them were failures; and anyone who has ever lived in Brussels knows how many stories are current there as to his callous indifference to their matrimonial calamities. Again and again the story ran round Brussels that Princess Louise of Saxe-Coburg had run away from her husband and taken refuge at Laeken, and that her eyes were not only red but black: that Philip of Saxe-Coburg, in fact, had been knocking her about, and that she had vowed, with tears streaming down her cheeks, that nothing would induce her to return to him. But Leopold always sent her back; for why—one pictures him asking—should his daughter Louise expect to be any happier than his wife Henrietta, and why should his son-in-law be expected to behave any better than he himself behaved? No doubt there was logic of a kind—though not of the best kind—in the argument. No doubt, too, the same logic was brought into play when Stéphanie’s marriage was arranged.
Countess Marie protests that Stéphanie was plain, and had no style. She speaks of her red arms, her deplorable figure, her unbecomingly dressed hair; but that is not the verdict of contemporary Brussels, where she was to be seen daily in the Park and the streets. What Brussels remembers is a little girl— a “flapper,” as people say nowadays—simple and exceedingly attractive: a little girl who reminded Brussels of a Dresden china statuette; a little girl in short frocks, with her hair hanging down her back. She was not grown up, Brussels declares, when she was married; she was only dressed to look as if she were grown up. She was put into long skirts, and her hair was done up, du jour au lendemain, before the proper time, because this chance of a brilliant marriage had suddenly come her way.
Presumably there was something of the gawkiness of the schoolgirl about her when she was thus first dressed as a woman. Presumably that gawkiness did not entirely vanish in the course of the journey from Brussels to Vienna, where she was certain, as a foreigner, to encounter far more captious criticism; Vienna being nearly as chic as Paris, quite as quizzical in a heavier way, and decidedly less disposed to make smooth the path of the stranger. Stéphanie, in short, must at first have seemed a little “provincial” to the Viennese; and there were plenty of Viennese ladies—Palast Damen and others—whose cue it was to make the worst of her, and to rejoice that, as Rudolph had married such a wife, “there was no possibility,” to quote Countess Marie, “of his ever becoming a model husband.”
Assuredly he did not become one, and there does not even seem to have been an interlude of sunshine before the gathering of the clouds. Even the daughter presently born to the Archduke and the Archduchess is said to have been a cause of contention between them; and Stéphanie, with that passion for self-expression which she shared with almost every member of the House of Habsburg except Francis Joseph, has written out and published a confession of the emotions which her experiences of marriage brought her, and the lessons which she drew from them. This is the essential passage:--
“Two quite young persons see each other for the first time, know each other a quarter of an hour, and speak the binding word which death alone can untie.
“If there is something beautiful in the thought that two human beings who love and respect one another are joined before God in holy matrimony, so there is something uncommonly repulsive in the idea that such a union can be formed without any preparation and remain a lie from the altar to the grave.
“I regret I was not born in humble circumstances in some fisherman’s hamlet on the seashore. There one is nearer to happiness and peace than in our high positions and in our complex society. Happiness depends on living naturally, and what increases our distance from nature decreases our happiness.
“Is it possible? A long, long, terrible night has gone by for me, and I see a rosy dawn of hope on the clouded sky, a ray of light which tells of the rising sun of joy. Will the sun rise in full glory? Will he warm me with his rays, and dry the tears from my cheeks? Come, my sun, come! You find a poor faded flower whose freshness has been destroyed by the hard frost of fate.”
And yet, when Countess Marie Larisch came to tell what she knew of the Meyerling tragedy, her “secret” was to the effect that Rudolph himself had not only aspired to, but also conspired for, the throne of Hungary during Francis Joseph’s lifetime. But neither story can be said to disprove the other; for one can discover no grounds for crediting Rudolph with firm and consistent principles.
He was capable of affability; but he was also capable of hauteur. One might compare him, as one might compare a good many of the Habsburgs, to a poker which will unbend itself, but declines to be unbent by others. Some workmen employed in the Palace discovered that, when he came among them, as a child, and talked to them while they were engaged in decorations and repairs. “Well, what is your name, young fellow?” they presumed to ask him; and the little boy drew himself up. “Papa and mamma call me Rudolph,” he answered. “Other people call me Monseigneur.” He was young enough for the snub to amuse without giving pain. Most likely the workmen declared him to be whatever is the German for “a chip of the old block.” At any rate he grew up to be popular with people who did not know him, or only knew him slightly. He was “unser Rudi,” just as the German Emperor Frederick was “unser Fritz.”
Still, he was a spoiled child, and precociously cynical; and perhaps, in view of the way in which he was brought up, it would have been hard for him to be anything else. The legend of his mother’s devotion to him is found at the circumference of his circle, but cannot be traced to its centre. From an early age, he saw and understood too much for innocence. Among other things he saw the “go-between,” and knew for what purpose she went between. There was no example before his eyes to lead him to look upon happiness in marriage as an easily attainable ideal; and he held women cheap, because so many of them made themselves cheap with him. One of Countess Marie’s stories is to the effect that she boxed his ears for laughing at “love-sick girls,” and boasting of his conquests, and saying of a certain Elizabeth T-----: ”The silly goose thinks I adore her, and so I can do anything I like with her.”
It was, therefore, as a young man who had already lost his illusions that Rudolph set out m search of a wife. The story has been told that another lady travelled with him as a provisional companion while he was looking for a wife, and was, at least once, caught in his company in compromising circumstances by his prospective mother-in-law. He was too eligible a parti for any prospective mother-inlaw to attach more importance than she could help to such a contretemps; and after Rudolph had rejected the suit of Princess Mathilde of Saxony, on the ground that her style of beauty was of too luxuriant an effulgence, then, “weary,” to quote Countess Marie, “of a choice of many evils, he decided to take the least of them, as represented by the Princess Stéphanie of Belgium.” And Stéphanie said, or is said to have said, “He asked me for my hand so prettily that I could not possibly refuse it to him.”
That in spite of the compromising discovery of the provisional lady companion in his rooms. His manner must indeed have been charming if it removed the impression of that surprise; but Rudolph could be fascinating when he chose, and his ready wit may have prompted a plausible explanation. Moreover, Stéphanie was little more than a child—too young to understand; and her father, Leopold II., was not a man into whose calculations either sentiment or morality entered. We all know him as the King who neglected the Austrian Archduchess to whom he was married for such persons as Cleo de Merode and the Baroness Vaughan; and he may well have said to himself that he saw no reason why his daughter should expect to be any happier in her marriage than his wife, or why his younger daughter should expect to be any happier in her marriage than her elder sister.
It is notorious, at any rate, that no love was ever lost between Leopold and either of his daughters. The marriages of both of them were failures; and anyone who has ever lived in Brussels knows how many stories are current there as to his callous indifference to their matrimonial calamities. Again and again the story ran round Brussels that Princess Louise of Saxe-Coburg had run away from her husband and taken refuge at Laeken, and that her eyes were not only red but black: that Philip of Saxe-Coburg, in fact, had been knocking her about, and that she had vowed, with tears streaming down her cheeks, that nothing would induce her to return to him. But Leopold always sent her back; for why—one pictures him asking—should his daughter Louise expect to be any happier than his wife Henrietta, and why should his son-in-law be expected to behave any better than he himself behaved? No doubt there was logic of a kind—though not of the best kind—in the argument. No doubt, too, the same logic was brought into play when Stéphanie’s marriage was arranged.
Countess Marie protests that Stéphanie was plain, and had no style. She speaks of her red arms, her deplorable figure, her unbecomingly dressed hair; but that is not the verdict of contemporary Brussels, where she was to be seen daily in the Park and the streets. What Brussels remembers is a little girl— a “flapper,” as people say nowadays—simple and exceedingly attractive: a little girl who reminded Brussels of a Dresden china statuette; a little girl in short frocks, with her hair hanging down her back. She was not grown up, Brussels declares, when she was married; she was only dressed to look as if she were grown up. She was put into long skirts, and her hair was done up, du jour au lendemain, before the proper time, because this chance of a brilliant marriage had suddenly come her way.
Presumably there was something of the gawkiness of the schoolgirl about her when she was thus first dressed as a woman. Presumably that gawkiness did not entirely vanish in the course of the journey from Brussels to Vienna, where she was certain, as a foreigner, to encounter far more captious criticism; Vienna being nearly as chic as Paris, quite as quizzical in a heavier way, and decidedly less disposed to make smooth the path of the stranger. Stéphanie, in short, must at first have seemed a little “provincial” to the Viennese; and there were plenty of Viennese ladies—Palast Damen and others—whose cue it was to make the worst of her, and to rejoice that, as Rudolph had married such a wife, “there was no possibility,” to quote Countess Marie, “of his ever becoming a model husband.”
Assuredly he did not become one, and there does not even seem to have been an interlude of sunshine before the gathering of the clouds. Even the daughter presently born to the Archduke and the Archduchess is said to have been a cause of contention between them; and Stéphanie, with that passion for self-expression which she shared with almost every member of the House of Habsburg except Francis Joseph, has written out and published a confession of the emotions which her experiences of marriage brought her, and the lessons which she drew from them. This is the essential passage:--
“Two quite young persons see each other for the first time, know each other a quarter of an hour, and speak the binding word which death alone can untie.
“If there is something beautiful in the thought that two human beings who love and respect one another are joined before God in holy matrimony, so there is something uncommonly repulsive in the idea that such a union can be formed without any preparation and remain a lie from the altar to the grave.
“I regret I was not born in humble circumstances in some fisherman’s hamlet on the seashore. There one is nearer to happiness and peace than in our high positions and in our complex society. Happiness depends on living naturally, and what increases our distance from nature decreases our happiness.
“Is it possible? A long, long, terrible night has gone by for me, and I see a rosy dawn of hope on the clouded sky, a ray of light which tells of the rising sun of joy. Will the sun rise in full glory? Will he warm me with his rays, and dry the tears from my cheeks? Come, my sun, come! You find a poor faded flower whose freshness has been destroyed by the hard frost of fate.”
So Stéphanie wrote, after the tragedy had set her free, and at the hour when she was about to make use of her freedom and seek in a marriage of her own choice the happiness of which she had not enjoyed even the illusory semblance in the marriage into which she was hurried “without any preparation “—suddenly transformed from a schoolgirl into a grown woman—by a father to whom no sacrifice was too precious to be offered up on the altar of the Mammon of Unrighteousness. She was too young and innocent—too bourgeoise, perhaps—to enter into the spirit of the sacrifice. It was idle for anyone to tell her that Crown Princes would be Crown Princes, and that Crown Princesses who raised jealous objections to their doing so only made themselves ridiculous; that her splendid position was the substance, and love only the shadow. Taught by instinct, she knew better. She was too simple to wear a mask—or, if she did sometimes wear one, it was continually falling off; and she was too proud to pretend not to see the things which were happening under her nose. Moreover, just as there were women whose cue it was to make her feel provincial, so there were women—in many cases the same women—whose cue it was to make her feel neglected.
The list of the women for whom Rudolph neglected Stéphanie would be long and difficult to make out; but Mary Vetsera is the only one who matters. All the world knows—and knew at the time—that Mary Vetsera died with Rudolph on the day of the mysterious Meyerling tragedy; but there was a good deal of unnecessary reticence about her in the narratives written at the time. She figured as “Marie V ,” as “a beautiful Jewess,” etc., etc.; but she was, as a matter of fact, a well-known member of a family which was at that time very well known indeed in Vienna.
Her mother, the Baroness Vetsera, was nee Baltazzi; and the Baltazzis were people who were in Viennese society without being of it. Their precise position in that society may be fixed by the fact that they received invitations to the bal beim Hof, but not to the more intimate and exclusive bal am Hof. The people who did not like them called them “rastas,” meaning that they cut a dash, but that the account which they gave of their antecedents was not quite satisfactory to inquisitive aristocrats. They came from Constantinople by way of London, and they threw their money about. One always finds such people even in the most exclusive societies: people whom Society accepts, without taking them to its bosom.
Some of the brothers were—and still are—tolerably well known in England, as well as in their own country. Alexander Baltazzi won the Derby with the Hungarian horse Kisber in 1876. Hector Baltazzi is now connected with the picture-dealing business, and is sometimes to be met at the Ritz Hotel in London—a dapper little man, standing with his hands in his pockets. One of the brothers is prosperously engaged in some mercantile undertaking in Roumania; and both the sisters made good marriages. Evelyn married Count George Stockau; and Helen, with whom we are more immediately concerned, married Baron Vetsera. But the reputation of Helen, Baroness Vetsera, was not without its flaws; and Viennese society did not always exercise charity in determining its attitude towards her. It frequented her entertainments; but it also called her la Baronne Cardinal.
Readers of Halévy’s M. et Madame Cardinal and Les petiies Cardinal will understand the significance of that sobriquet. The Madame Cardinal of fiction was the typical mère d’actrice: a well-known French type, distinguished by taking a purely business-like view of a daughter’s attraction for wealthy patrons of the drama. Countess Marie Larisch, who was everybody’s confidante in the matter, depicts the Baroness Vetsera as a woman of exactly that character—albeit, of course, on a more exalted plane. She was not rich, she says, but was living on her capital, relying on her daughters as her assets. They must make wealthy marriages, or failing that--
He was capable of affability; but he was also capable of hauteur. One might compare him, as one might compare a good many of the Habsburgs, to a poker which will unbend itself, but declines to be unbent by others. Some workmen employed in the Palace discovered that, when he came among them, as a child, and talked to them while they were engaged in decorations and repairs. “Well, what is your name, young fellow?” they presumed to ask him; and the little boy drew himself up. “Papa and mamma call me Rudolph,” he answered. “Other people call me Monseigneur.” He was young enough for the snub to amuse without giving pain. Most likely the workmen declared him to be whatever is the German for “a chip of the old block.” At any rate he grew up to be popular with people who did not know him, or only knew him slightly. He was “unser Rudi,” just as the German Emperor Frederick was “unser Fritz.”
Still, he was a spoiled child, and precociously cynical; and perhaps, in view of the way in which he was brought up, it would have been hard for him to be anything else. The legend of his mother’s devotion to him is found at the circumference of his circle, but cannot be traced to its centre. From an early age, he saw and understood too much for innocence. Among other things he saw the “go-between,” and knew for what purpose she went between. There was no example before his eyes to lead him to look upon happiness in marriage as an easily attainable ideal; and he held women cheap, because so many of them made themselves cheap with him. One of Countess Marie’s stories is to the effect that she boxed his ears for laughing at “love-sick girls,” and boasting of his conquests, and saying of a certain Elizabeth T-----: ”The silly goose thinks I adore her, and so I can do anything I like with her.”
It was, therefore, as a young man who had already lost his illusions that Rudolph set out m search of a wife. The story has been told that another lady travelled with him as a provisional companion while he was looking for a wife, and was, at least once, caught in his company in compromising circumstances by his prospective mother-in-law. He was too eligible a parti for any prospective mother-inlaw to attach more importance than she could help to such a contretemps; and after Rudolph had rejected the suit of Princess Mathilde of Saxony, on the ground that her style of beauty was of too luxuriant an effulgence, then, “weary,” to quote Countess Marie, “of a choice of many evils, he decided to take the least of them, as represented by the Princess Stéphanie of Belgium.” And Stéphanie said, or is said to have said, “He asked me for my hand so prettily that I could not possibly refuse it to him.”
That in spite of the compromising discovery of the provisional lady companion in his rooms. His manner must indeed have been charming if it removed the impression of that surprise; but Rudolph could be fascinating when he chose, and his ready wit may have prompted a plausible explanation. Moreover, Stéphanie was little more than a child—too young to understand; and her father, Leopold II., was not a man into whose calculations either sentiment or morality entered. We all know him as the King who neglected the Austrian Archduchess to whom he was married for such persons as Cleo de Merode and the Baroness Vaughan; and he may well have said to himself that he saw no reason why his daughter should expect to be any happier in her marriage than his wife, or why his younger daughter should expect to be any happier in her marriage than her elder sister.
It is notorious, at any rate, that no love was ever lost between Leopold and either of his daughters. The marriages of both of them were failures; and anyone who has ever lived in Brussels knows how many stories are current there as to his callous indifference to their matrimonial calamities. Again and again the story ran round Brussels that Princess Louise of Saxe-Coburg had run away from her husband and taken refuge at Laeken, and that her eyes were not only red but black: that Philip of Saxe-Coburg, in fact, had been knocking her about, and that she had vowed, with tears streaming down her cheeks, that nothing would induce her to return to him. But Leopold always sent her back; for why—one pictures him asking—should his daughter Louise expect to be any happier than his wife Henrietta, and why should his son-in-law be expected to behave any better than he himself behaved? No doubt there was logic of a kind—though not of the best kind—in the argument. No doubt, too, the same logic was brought into play when Stéphanie’s marriage was arranged.
Countess Marie protests that Stéphanie was plain, and had no style. She speaks of her red arms, her deplorable figure, her unbecomingly dressed hair; but that is not the verdict of contemporary Brussels, where she was to be seen daily in the Park and the streets. What Brussels remembers is a little girl— a “flapper,” as people say nowadays—simple and exceedingly attractive: a little girl who reminded Brussels of a Dresden china statuette; a little girl in short frocks, with her hair hanging down her back. She was not grown up, Brussels declares, when she was married; she was only dressed to look as if she were grown up. She was put into long skirts, and her hair was done up, du jour au lendemain, before the proper time, because this chance of a brilliant marriage had suddenly come her way.
Presumably there was something of the gawkiness of the schoolgirl about her when she was thus first dressed as a woman. Presumably that gawkiness did not entirely vanish in the course of the journey from Brussels to Vienna, where she was certain, as a foreigner, to encounter far more captious criticism; Vienna being nearly as chic as Paris, quite as quizzical in a heavier way, and decidedly less disposed to make smooth the path of the stranger. Stéphanie, in short, must at first have seemed a little “provincial” to the Viennese; and there were plenty of Viennese ladies—Palast Damen and others—whose cue it was to make the worst of her, and to rejoice that, as Rudolph had married such a wife, “there was no possibility,” to quote Countess Marie, “of his ever becoming a model husband.”
Assuredly he did not become one, and there does not even seem to have been an interlude of sunshine before the gathering of the clouds. Even the daughter presently born to the Archduke and the Archduchess is said to have been a cause of contention between them; and Stéphanie, with that passion for self-expression which she shared with almost every member of the House of Habsburg except Francis Joseph, has written out and published a confession of the emotions which her experiences of marriage brought her, and the lessons which she drew from them. This is the essential passage:--
“Two quite young persons see each other for the first time, know each other a quarter of an hour, and speak the binding word which death alone can untie.
“If there is something beautiful in the thought that two human beings who love and respect one another are joined before God in holy matrimony, so there is something uncommonly repulsive in the idea that such a union can be formed without any preparation and remain a lie from the altar to the grave.
“I regret I was not born in humble circumstances in some fisherman’s hamlet on the seashore. There one is nearer to happiness and peace than in our high positions and in our complex society. Happiness depends on living naturally, and what increases our distance from nature decreases our happiness.
“Is it possible? A long, long, terrible night has gone by for me, and I see a rosy dawn of hope on the clouded sky, a ray of light which tells of the rising sun of joy. Will the sun rise in full glory? Will he warm me with his rays, and dry the tears from my cheeks? Come, my sun, come! You find a poor faded flower whose freshness has been destroyed by the hard frost of fate.”
So Stéphanie wrote, after the tragedy had set her free, and at the hour when she was about to make use of her freedom and seek in a marriage of her own choice the happiness of which she had not enjoyed even the illusory semblance in the marriage into which she was hurried “without any preparation “—suddenly transformed from a schoolgirl into a grown woman—by a father to whom no sacrifice was too precious to be offered up on the altar of the Mammon of Unrighteousness. She was too young and innocent—too bourgeoise, perhaps—to enter into the spirit of the sacrifice. It was idle for anyone to tell her that Crown Princes would be Crown Princes, and that Crown Princesses who raised jealous objections to their doing so only made themselves ridiculous; that her splendid position was the substance, and love only the shadow. Taught by instinct, she knew better. She was too simple to wear a mask—or, if she did sometimes wear one, it was continually falling off; and she was too proud to pretend not to see the things which were happening under her nose. Moreover, just as there were women whose cue it was to make her feel provincial, so there were women—in many cases the same women—whose cue it was to make her feel neglected.
The list of the women for whom Rudolph neglected Stéphanie would be long and difficult to make out; but Mary Vetsera is the only one who matters. All the world knows—and knew at the time—that Mary Vetsera died with Rudolph on the day of the mysterious Meyerling tragedy; but there was a good deal of unnecessary reticence about her in the narratives written at the time. She figured as “Marie V ,” as “a beautiful Jewess,” etc., etc.; but she was, as a matter of fact, a well-known member of a family which was at that time very well known indeed in Vienna.
Her mother, the Baroness Vetsera, was nee Baltazzi; and the Baltazzis were people who were in Viennese society without being of it. Their precise position in that society may be fixed by the fact that they received invitations to the bal beim Hof, but not to the more intimate and exclusive bal am Hof. The people who did not like them called them “rastas,” meaning that they cut a dash, but that the account which they gave of their antecedents was not quite satisfactory to inquisitive aristocrats. They came from Constantinople by way of London, and they threw their money about. One always finds such people even in the most exclusive societies: people whom Society accepts, without taking them to its bosom.
Some of the brothers were—and still are—tolerably well known in England, as well as in their own country. Alexander Baltazzi won the Derby with the Hungarian horse Kisber in 1876. Hector Baltazzi is now connected with the picture-dealing business, and is sometimes to be met at the Ritz Hotel in London—a dapper little man, standing with his hands in his pockets. One of the brothers is prosperously engaged in some mercantile undertaking in Roumania; and both the sisters made good marriages. Evelyn married Count George Stockau; and Helen, with whom we are more immediately concerned, married Baron Vetsera. But the reputation of Helen, Baroness Vetsera, was not without its flaws; and Viennese society did not always exercise charity in determining its attitude towards her. It frequented her entertainments; but it also called her la Baronne Cardinal.
Readers of Halévy’s M. et Madame Cardinal and Les petiies Cardinal will understand the significance of that sobriquet. The Madame Cardinal of fiction was the typical mère d’actrice: a well-known French type, distinguished by taking a purely business-like view of a daughter’s attraction for wealthy patrons of the drama. Countess Marie Larisch, who was everybody’s confidante in the matter, depicts the Baroness Vetsera as a woman of exactly that character—albeit, of course, on a more exalted plane. She was not rich, she says, but was living on her capital, relying on her daughters as her assets. They must make wealthy marriages, or failing that--
“Will you,” she asked Countess Marie, “undertake a very difficult mission for me? I want you to talk plainly to the Prince about Mary. You might even give him a hint that matters might be arranged if he is really desperately in love with her. At any rate, I’ve no objection to discussing the matter with the Crown Prince.”
There we have the dots on the i’s in so far as Mary’s mother is concerned. Mary, for her, was an article of merchandise; and Countess Marie was, for her as for the Empress, a heaven-sent “go That is what Countess Marie does not explain; and her failure to see that any explanation is required and will be demanded may perhaps be taken as an indirect proof of her bona fides. An inventor would not have failed to supply the missing link, which neither a criminal investigator nor a sensational novelist would have any difficulty in conjecturing. Granted that Rudolph had involved himself in a political plot—whether to get himself crowned King of Hungary or for any other purpose —then the whole of the evidence relating to the plot cannot have been contained in the mysterious steel casket. Some further evidence—a letter or some other scrap of paper—must have been in Mary Vetsera’s possession. She must have been holding it over Rudolph’s head as an instrument of blackmail—demanding, perhaps, that he should divorce his wife and marry her; or, at all events, he must have suspected her of the intention to do so, and have wanted to get the document back from her. On that assumption—but on no other—the political necessity of the interview on which Rudolph insisted is clear.
In any case, he did insist; and Countess Marie yielded to his entreaties. The allegation has been made that he offered her a pecuniary inducement to do so; but there is no reason for believing that. It would have been worth his while; but it can hardly have been necessary. So she found a pretext, drove Mary to the Hofburg, and left her there. “I want,” Rudolph said, “to keep Mary with me for two days, in order to come to an easy understanding with the Baroness over her.” He also said, alluding to the political trouble: “A great deal may happen in two days, and I want Mary to be with me “—for what reason (seeing that, according to the same narrator, he had spoken of Mary as a woman who refused to be shaken off) we are left to guess.
And so Mary was whisked away to Meyerling; whence the telegraph presently sped the first intimation of the famous and mysterious tragedy.
In any case, he did insist; and Countess Marie yielded to his entreaties. The allegation has been made that he offered her a pecuniary inducement to do so; but there is no reason for believing that. It would have been worth his while; but it can hardly have been necessary. So she found a pretext, drove Mary to the Hofburg, and left her there. “I want,” Rudolph said, “to keep Mary with me for two days, in order to come to an easy understanding with the Baroness over her.” He also said, alluding to the political trouble: “A great deal may happen in two days, and I want Mary to be with me “—for what reason (seeing that, according to the same narrator, he had spoken of Mary as a woman who refused to be shaken off) we are left to guess.
And so Mary was whisked away to Meyerling; whence the telegraph presently sped the first intimation of the famous and mysterious tragedy.
CHAPTER XXI.
What the Archduchess Stéphanie knew—What Rudolph knew that she knew—The search for Mary Vetsera by her relatives—The news of the Meyerling tragedy—The two official versions—The many unofficial versions—The attempt to hush the matter up—Mary Vetsera’s letter to Countess Marie Larisch.
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Meyerling was Rudolph’s hunting-box in the forest, not many miles from Vienna: a hunting-box not used for purposes of sport alone. The Crown Prince had his boon companions, as well as his artistic and intellectual friends; and he used to revel and drink deep with them in this secluded and beautiful resort. It was also whispered that his hunting-box was his Parc-aux-Cerfs: the place, at all events, at which he made romantic assignations. Rumour credited him with a good many of these: assignations with society ladies, assignations with gamekeepers’ daughters, &c, &c. It may be, of course, that rumour exaggerated, but there certainly was fire as well as smoke.
Stéphanie had been taken to Meyerling, and had admired its beauties. “What a lovely place to live in!” she had exclaimed. “Yes, and what a lovely place to die in!” Rudolph had replied, speaking morbidly, but without any deliberately ominous intention. That in the course of the honeymoon, and before estrangement had begun; but estrangement had come quickly, and had continued without intermission. Rudolph complained that the lovelight had never shone in Stéphanie’s eyes; but it does not seem that he tried very hard or very long to kindle it. Those eyes, he confided to a friend, “seemed incapable of expressing any feelings save those of wariness and suspicion “; and the time came when Stéphanie, as little in love with him as he with her, but more obedient to duty, not only suspected, but knew.
And Rudolph knew that she knew. The ballroom scene, described in the last chapter, would have proved that to him, even if there had been no other evidence; but he was aware, as a matter of fact, that Stéphanie had been not only watching him, but following him. There was a day when Rudolph went to visit Mary Vetsera in a hired carriage, and Stéphanie drove behind him, but unseen by him, in a carriage from the Imperial stables. She stopped outside the house which he had entered, and there changed carriages, returning to the Palace in his hired conveyance, and instructing the driver of the Imperial carriage to wait for him. It was quite impossible for Rudolph, after that, to flatter himself that his wife was ignorant of his proceedings; but there is no reason for supposing that he cared very much whether she was ignorant of them or not.
People have said that he wanted Stéphanie to divorce him in order that he might be free to marry Mary Vetsera. The story is also told—we have already spoken of it—that he was plotting for the throne of Hungary in the belief that the Hungarians, who loved him, would have been willing to accept Mary Vetsera as their Queen; but Countess Marie Larisch, who is our sole first-hand authority for the plot, disclaims all personal knowledge of it. She was pressed on the point before her much-discussed book appeared, and her replies to the questions put to her were explicit. “No,” she said, “I have no first-hand knowledge of the matter. I only repeat what I was told—what I heard from the Archduke John Salvator—what Julius Andrassy hinted—what was current among those who were in a position to know. The existence of a plot to seize the throne of Hungary was the only possible inference from their confidences.”
That is very indirect evidence, and, in the strict sense of the word, it is not evidence at all; but we shall have to return to the story when the Archduke John Salvator comes upon the scene. Most likely there was, at any rate, some loose talk on the subject; most likely Mary Vetsera herself had heard the talk and been impressed by it. A man will sometimes, as we all know, confide to a slip of a girl secrets which he jealously withholds from his most intimate male friends; and such a girl is very prone to believe anything which she wishes to believe—her imagination quickly transforming a vague possibility into a precise certainty. There is nothing, therefore, absurd on the face of it in the theory that Mary Vetsera went to Meyerling in the belief that she would presently leave Meyerling to be crowned at Buda. Nor is it unlikely—for reasons given in the last chapter—that her hopes, and her disposition to chatter about them, made it urgently necessary for Rudolph to see her on the subject and find a means of putting a bridle on her tongue.
At any rate, Mary Vetsera did go to Meyerling; and Countess Marie Larisch, who had taken her to the Hofburg and lost her there, had to explain her disappearance to the members of her family, and see if she could put them in the way of finding her. She describes a family gathering at which the Baroness Vetsera, justifying the sobriquet of Baronne Cardinal, displayed complete indifference to her daughter’s adventures, but her brother, Alexander Baltazzi, was furious, and insisted that Countess Marie should accompany him to the prefecture of police. She complied; and she describes that interview too: a remarkable interview at which Alexander Baltazzi inquired indignantly whether the Habsburgs were to be “allowed to behave like common ravishers,” and the Chief of the Secret Police replied that it was no part of his constabulary duty to interfere with the Crown Prince’s amours. And then:--
Stéphanie had been taken to Meyerling, and had admired its beauties. “What a lovely place to live in!” she had exclaimed. “Yes, and what a lovely place to die in!” Rudolph had replied, speaking morbidly, but without any deliberately ominous intention. That in the course of the honeymoon, and before estrangement had begun; but estrangement had come quickly, and had continued without intermission. Rudolph complained that the lovelight had never shone in Stéphanie’s eyes; but it does not seem that he tried very hard or very long to kindle it. Those eyes, he confided to a friend, “seemed incapable of expressing any feelings save those of wariness and suspicion “; and the time came when Stéphanie, as little in love with him as he with her, but more obedient to duty, not only suspected, but knew.
And Rudolph knew that she knew. The ballroom scene, described in the last chapter, would have proved that to him, even if there had been no other evidence; but he was aware, as a matter of fact, that Stéphanie had been not only watching him, but following him. There was a day when Rudolph went to visit Mary Vetsera in a hired carriage, and Stéphanie drove behind him, but unseen by him, in a carriage from the Imperial stables. She stopped outside the house which he had entered, and there changed carriages, returning to the Palace in his hired conveyance, and instructing the driver of the Imperial carriage to wait for him. It was quite impossible for Rudolph, after that, to flatter himself that his wife was ignorant of his proceedings; but there is no reason for supposing that he cared very much whether she was ignorant of them or not.
People have said that he wanted Stéphanie to divorce him in order that he might be free to marry Mary Vetsera. The story is also told—we have already spoken of it—that he was plotting for the throne of Hungary in the belief that the Hungarians, who loved him, would have been willing to accept Mary Vetsera as their Queen; but Countess Marie Larisch, who is our sole first-hand authority for the plot, disclaims all personal knowledge of it. She was pressed on the point before her much-discussed book appeared, and her replies to the questions put to her were explicit. “No,” she said, “I have no first-hand knowledge of the matter. I only repeat what I was told—what I heard from the Archduke John Salvator—what Julius Andrassy hinted—what was current among those who were in a position to know. The existence of a plot to seize the throne of Hungary was the only possible inference from their confidences.”
That is very indirect evidence, and, in the strict sense of the word, it is not evidence at all; but we shall have to return to the story when the Archduke John Salvator comes upon the scene. Most likely there was, at any rate, some loose talk on the subject; most likely Mary Vetsera herself had heard the talk and been impressed by it. A man will sometimes, as we all know, confide to a slip of a girl secrets which he jealously withholds from his most intimate male friends; and such a girl is very prone to believe anything which she wishes to believe—her imagination quickly transforming a vague possibility into a precise certainty. There is nothing, therefore, absurd on the face of it in the theory that Mary Vetsera went to Meyerling in the belief that she would presently leave Meyerling to be crowned at Buda. Nor is it unlikely—for reasons given in the last chapter—that her hopes, and her disposition to chatter about them, made it urgently necessary for Rudolph to see her on the subject and find a means of putting a bridle on her tongue.
At any rate, Mary Vetsera did go to Meyerling; and Countess Marie Larisch, who had taken her to the Hofburg and lost her there, had to explain her disappearance to the members of her family, and see if she could put them in the way of finding her. She describes a family gathering at which the Baroness Vetsera, justifying the sobriquet of Baronne Cardinal, displayed complete indifference to her daughter’s adventures, but her brother, Alexander Baltazzi, was furious, and insisted that Countess Marie should accompany him to the prefecture of police. She complied; and she describes that interview too: a remarkable interview at which Alexander Baltazzi inquired indignantly whether the Habsburgs were to be “allowed to behave like common ravishers,” and the Chief of the Secret Police replied that it was no part of his constabulary duty to interfere with the Crown Prince’s amours. And then:--
“But perhaps you don’t realise,” said I, “that this young lady belongs to the aristocracy?”
“Then it’s not one of the bourgeoisie? Oh, that’s quite another story,” replied the functionary. “Very well, I will see what I can do.”
For the policeman, as for Windischgraetz, mankind evidently began with the baron; and he gave the information. “His Imperial Highness is at Alland,” [1] he announced; but the announcement came too late. It had hardly been made—and no action had yet been taken on account of it—when the telegraph flashed its startling news from Meyerling to Vienna. The Crown Prince had died suddenly at Meyerling—of apoplexy.
That was the first story, officially given out; but it was found that it could not be maintained. People did not believe it—naturally enough, seeing that it is almost an unknown thing for a man of Rudolph’s age to die of apoplexy. It might have obtained credence—or, at all events, it might have been upheld in the face of scepticism—if it could have been substantiated by a medical certificate; but that certificate could not be procured. The doctors were asked to draft and sign it; but they refused to do so. They were then asked at least to give a certificate of death from heart failure on the ground that failure of the heart’s action played its part in every death; but they would not do that either. So that violence had to be admitted; and an amended official version of the story was issued to the effect that the Crown Prince had committed suicide by shooting himself.
Even so, public opinion was not satisfied. The medical certificates were called for; and when they were published they were severely criticised. There were two such certificates, and they contradicted each other; and neither of them would have been accepted in an English criminal court as compatible with the theory of suicide. According to one certificate, the bullet entered the head behind the ear and carried off the top part of the skull; according to the other, it had entered by the left temple and issued by the right temple. The critics pointed out that Rudolph was most unlikely to have shot himself in the left temple, because he was not left-handed, and that it was materially impossible for him to have shot himself from behind.
The inference was clear. If Rudolph had been shot, and had not shot himself, then he must have been shot by some other person. That is to say, either there had been an accident or he had been murdered. But if there had been an accident, there would have been no need to envelop it in mystery or tell certificated lies about it; so the hypothesis of murder held the field. But who could have murdered him, and why should he have been murdered? Conjecture fastened itself on those problems, and found solution for them: solutions which varied accordingly, as the speculators knew, or did not know, that Mary Vetsera, as well as the Crown Prince, was involved in the tragedy, and that her death, as well as his, had to be accounted for. The theories which obtained the widest credence were the following:--
1. Rudolph had been killed in the course of a drunken quarrel by one of his boon companions.
2. Rudolph had been pursuing the daughter of a gamekeeper with his attentions. The gamekeeper had caught him in flagrante delicto, and had shot him without waiting to ascertain who he was. His body had been carried into his bedroom in the hunting-box, and the suicide tableau had been arranged in order to cover up the scandal.
3. One of the Baltazzis, jealous of his niece’s honour, had tracked Mary Vetsera to Meyerling, and had there committed the double murder.
Not one of these three theories will hold water, in view of the facts which have since been brought to light. The first and second may be set aside on the ground that there is nothing in either of them to account for the death of Mary Vetsera. The third theory is incompatible with statements, the truth of which there is no reason to doubt, made by Countess Marie Larisch in “My Past.”
That, in Countess Marie’s book, we have “the secret of Meyerling disclosed” is an exaggerated claim; and there are weak points in her narrative which it is important to enumerate. She was not at Meyerling at the time of the tragedy, nor was she present when the dead bodies were discovered. All that she tells us on that branch of the subject is second-hand evidence, derived from Count George Stockau and the Court physician, Dr. Wiederhofer. But there were two things, not known to the general public, which she did know. She knew:--
1. That the Baltazzis had tried in vain to discover Mary Vetsera’s whereabouts.
2. That they knew nothing of the tragedy until Alexander Baltazzi and his brother-in-law, Count George Stockau, were ordered to proceed to Meyerling, in a closed carriage, accompanied by a member of the secret police, and remove Mary Vetsera’s body for secret burial in the cemetery of the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz.
“And,” said the policeman, “you are to support the body between you in such a way as to make it appear that the Baroness still lives.”
The purpose of that order was clear enough. The matter was to be hushed up and the truth to be concealed, no matter whose feelings suffered in the process, in order that scandal might be avoided and the remnants of the Crown Prince’s reputation be preserved. Mary Vetsera’s name was not to be mentioned in connection with the Meyerling affair; but it was to be given out—all her relatives being parties to the deception—that she had died a natural death elsewhere. But that end was not achieved. It leaked out—as such things do leak out—that Mary Vetsera and the Crown Prince had died together; and the next thing to be done was to get rid of the theory of murder, and produce evidence in support of the theory of suicide. And here it is important to note that we are faced by a direct conflict of testimony.
The medical certificates, as we have seen, demonstrate that Rudolph did not shoot herself, but was shot; but the inference which they compel was never formally drawn from them in any court of investigation; and presently letters were handed to the Press, in which both Rudolph and Mary Vetsera appeared to have announced their intention of taking their own lives. The first letter was from Rudolph to the Duke of Braganza :--
That was the first story, officially given out; but it was found that it could not be maintained. People did not believe it—naturally enough, seeing that it is almost an unknown thing for a man of Rudolph’s age to die of apoplexy. It might have obtained credence—or, at all events, it might have been upheld in the face of scepticism—if it could have been substantiated by a medical certificate; but that certificate could not be procured. The doctors were asked to draft and sign it; but they refused to do so. They were then asked at least to give a certificate of death from heart failure on the ground that failure of the heart’s action played its part in every death; but they would not do that either. So that violence had to be admitted; and an amended official version of the story was issued to the effect that the Crown Prince had committed suicide by shooting himself.
Even so, public opinion was not satisfied. The medical certificates were called for; and when they were published they were severely criticised. There were two such certificates, and they contradicted each other; and neither of them would have been accepted in an English criminal court as compatible with the theory of suicide. According to one certificate, the bullet entered the head behind the ear and carried off the top part of the skull; according to the other, it had entered by the left temple and issued by the right temple. The critics pointed out that Rudolph was most unlikely to have shot himself in the left temple, because he was not left-handed, and that it was materially impossible for him to have shot himself from behind.
The inference was clear. If Rudolph had been shot, and had not shot himself, then he must have been shot by some other person. That is to say, either there had been an accident or he had been murdered. But if there had been an accident, there would have been no need to envelop it in mystery or tell certificated lies about it; so the hypothesis of murder held the field. But who could have murdered him, and why should he have been murdered? Conjecture fastened itself on those problems, and found solution for them: solutions which varied accordingly, as the speculators knew, or did not know, that Mary Vetsera, as well as the Crown Prince, was involved in the tragedy, and that her death, as well as his, had to be accounted for. The theories which obtained the widest credence were the following:--
1. Rudolph had been killed in the course of a drunken quarrel by one of his boon companions.
2. Rudolph had been pursuing the daughter of a gamekeeper with his attentions. The gamekeeper had caught him in flagrante delicto, and had shot him without waiting to ascertain who he was. His body had been carried into his bedroom in the hunting-box, and the suicide tableau had been arranged in order to cover up the scandal.
3. One of the Baltazzis, jealous of his niece’s honour, had tracked Mary Vetsera to Meyerling, and had there committed the double murder.
Not one of these three theories will hold water, in view of the facts which have since been brought to light. The first and second may be set aside on the ground that there is nothing in either of them to account for the death of Mary Vetsera. The third theory is incompatible with statements, the truth of which there is no reason to doubt, made by Countess Marie Larisch in “My Past.”
That, in Countess Marie’s book, we have “the secret of Meyerling disclosed” is an exaggerated claim; and there are weak points in her narrative which it is important to enumerate. She was not at Meyerling at the time of the tragedy, nor was she present when the dead bodies were discovered. All that she tells us on that branch of the subject is second-hand evidence, derived from Count George Stockau and the Court physician, Dr. Wiederhofer. But there were two things, not known to the general public, which she did know. She knew:--
1. That the Baltazzis had tried in vain to discover Mary Vetsera’s whereabouts.
2. That they knew nothing of the tragedy until Alexander Baltazzi and his brother-in-law, Count George Stockau, were ordered to proceed to Meyerling, in a closed carriage, accompanied by a member of the secret police, and remove Mary Vetsera’s body for secret burial in the cemetery of the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz.
“And,” said the policeman, “you are to support the body between you in such a way as to make it appear that the Baroness still lives.”
The purpose of that order was clear enough. The matter was to be hushed up and the truth to be concealed, no matter whose feelings suffered in the process, in order that scandal might be avoided and the remnants of the Crown Prince’s reputation be preserved. Mary Vetsera’s name was not to be mentioned in connection with the Meyerling affair; but it was to be given out—all her relatives being parties to the deception—that she had died a natural death elsewhere. But that end was not achieved. It leaked out—as such things do leak out—that Mary Vetsera and the Crown Prince had died together; and the next thing to be done was to get rid of the theory of murder, and produce evidence in support of the theory of suicide. And here it is important to note that we are faced by a direct conflict of testimony.
The medical certificates, as we have seen, demonstrate that Rudolph did not shoot herself, but was shot; but the inference which they compel was never formally drawn from them in any court of investigation; and presently letters were handed to the Press, in which both Rudolph and Mary Vetsera appeared to have announced their intention of taking their own lives. The first letter was from Rudolph to the Duke of Braganza :--
“DEAR FRIEND,
“It is necessary that I should die. No other course is open to me. I hope you are well.
“I remain,
“At your service,
“RUDOLPH.”
The other letter was from Mary Vetsera to her mother:--
“DEAR MOTHER,
“I am going to die with Rudolph. We love each other too much. I ask your forgiveness and say farewell.
“Your very unhappy
“MARY.”
Nobody has ever regarded those letters—or other similar letters which have been circulated—as anything but forgeries. They impress one, indeed, not only as forgeries, but as clumsy forgeries. But here again Countess Marie Larisch makes a new contribution to the inquiry. Three weeks after Mary Vetsera’s death, she says, she received the following letter, found on the bedside table at Meyerling, but held back by the police:--
“DEAR MARIE,
“Forgive me all the trouble I have caused. I thank you so much for everything you have done for me. If life becomes hard for you, and I fear it will after what we have done, follow us. It is the best thing you can do.
“Your
“MARY.”
It is a thousand pities that Countess Marie Larisch did not reproduce that letter in facsimile; for that is clearly the manner in which such documents should be put in evidence. Had that course been adopted, the critic, in attempting to reconstruct the story, would have been able to treat the scrap of manuscript as the sole authoritative deposition. As it has not been adopted, other critics would be entitled to deny his right to do so; and he can only give it its due place together with other evidence derived from other sources. Perhaps the ultimate result will be pretty much the same; but we will see.
CHAPTER XXII.
Fantastic legends of the Meyerling tragedy—Talks with the Crown Prince’s valet—Foolish story given by Berliner Lokal Anseiger—What the Grand Duke of Tuscany knew—What Count Nigra knew—What Countess Marie Larisch tells—Her story confirmed from a contemporary source—Doubts which remain in spite of it—Was it suicide or murder?
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There are, as has been said, innumerable Meyerling legends, most of them fantastic, and not all of them of contemporaneous origin. The mystery has continued to fascinate the world; fresh solutions of it are continually turning up. In every newspaper office some stranger presents himself, from time to time, offering to tell the truth, as he has heard it from one of the very few who knew it; now and again the stranger’s offer is accepted. But, as a matter of fact, all the queer stories thus circulated can be traced to one of two sources,—neither of them sources in which any confidence can be placed.
The boon companions who were with Rudolph at Meyerling were Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg, Count Hoyos, and Count Bombelles; and they, at any rate, have never taken the newspapers into their confidence. There were also present the Crown Prince’s confidential valet, Loschek, and the coachman nicknamed Bratfisch (or Fried Fish), who had endeared himself to the Crown Prince by his talents as a whistler. It has been stated that Bratfisch was sent to America, and died in a lunatic asylum in New York; but, as a matter of fact, he died of pneumonia in Vienna, in 1892. It is possible that he talked; but no specific statement can be traced to him. The case of Loschek is different.
Loschek was indubitably a babbler. The world is full of men who claim to have heard the truth about the Meyerling tragedy from Loschek. The late Robert Barr, the novelist, told the present writer that he had heard the truth about Meyerling from Loschek while walking over an Alpine pass with him. The happy thought has often occurred to journalists of all nations that, if they could make Loschek drunk, they might extract the truth from him. But Loschek was wise in his generation, and discreet in a manner of his own. He knew that he could not trust himself to hold his tongue under the combined influence of good cheer and genial company; so he adopted the alternative policy of telling a different story to every interlocutor. It is possible that one of his stories may have been true; but it naturally passed the wit of journalists to decide which of them to credit. The testimony of Loschek, therefore, may be dismissed.
One story in particular in which Loschek’s name appears may be dismissed with Countess Marie Larisch’s assistance. It was telegraphed from Vienna to the Berliner Lokal Anzeiger, and purported to be based upon statements contained in a letter received from “Baron Louis Vetsera, brother of Mary Vetsera, who recently died in Venezuela.” This Louis Vetsera, it was set forth, was one of those who forced the door, and discovered the dead bodies. The newspaper cutting was shown to Countess Marie, who courteously supplied the following comment:--
The boon companions who were with Rudolph at Meyerling were Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg, Count Hoyos, and Count Bombelles; and they, at any rate, have never taken the newspapers into their confidence. There were also present the Crown Prince’s confidential valet, Loschek, and the coachman nicknamed Bratfisch (or Fried Fish), who had endeared himself to the Crown Prince by his talents as a whistler. It has been stated that Bratfisch was sent to America, and died in a lunatic asylum in New York; but, as a matter of fact, he died of pneumonia in Vienna, in 1892. It is possible that he talked; but no specific statement can be traced to him. The case of Loschek is different.
Loschek was indubitably a babbler. The world is full of men who claim to have heard the truth about the Meyerling tragedy from Loschek. The late Robert Barr, the novelist, told the present writer that he had heard the truth about Meyerling from Loschek while walking over an Alpine pass with him. The happy thought has often occurred to journalists of all nations that, if they could make Loschek drunk, they might extract the truth from him. But Loschek was wise in his generation, and discreet in a manner of his own. He knew that he could not trust himself to hold his tongue under the combined influence of good cheer and genial company; so he adopted the alternative policy of telling a different story to every interlocutor. It is possible that one of his stories may have been true; but it naturally passed the wit of journalists to decide which of them to credit. The testimony of Loschek, therefore, may be dismissed.
One story in particular in which Loschek’s name appears may be dismissed with Countess Marie Larisch’s assistance. It was telegraphed from Vienna to the Berliner Lokal Anzeiger, and purported to be based upon statements contained in a letter received from “Baron Louis Vetsera, brother of Mary Vetsera, who recently died in Venezuela.” This Louis Vetsera, it was set forth, was one of those who forced the door, and discovered the dead bodies. The newspaper cutting was shown to Countess Marie, who courteously supplied the following comment:--
“Mary Vetsera’s brother was not called Louis, but Ferenz (Ferry). Her eldest brother, Laszlo, was one of those burnt, many years ago, in the Ring Theatre. Ferry Vetsera was, at the time of the tragedy, only a boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age. He was not at Meyerling, nor was he one of those summoned there afterwards.”
That is conclusive, and shows us how history is sometimes made. Our other sources of information —trustworthy as far as they go—are in the so-called “confidences” of Count Nigra, the Italian Ambassador at Vienna, and Princess Louisa of Tuscany’s father, the Grand Duke Ferdinand. They both saw Rudolph’s body when laid out for burial; and they both brought from the spectacle, if not a story, at least a theory, and the material for a story.
“Papa said” (writes Princess Louisa), “that when he arrived at Vienna, Rudolph had been dead barely eight hours. He went into the room at the Hofburg where the body lay, and was horrified to see that the skull was smashed in, and that pieces of broken bottle-glass protruded from it.”
With which account we may compare the longer and more detailed story of Count Nigra, communicated to a representative of the Italian Corriera delta Sera:--
“He was killed—and in the most awful manner. I had the good or bad fortune—I do not know which to call it—to be the first of the ambassadors to arrive at Meyerling on that fatal morning. The Emperor was not yet there. The Prince was laid out on his bed; a large white bandage covered his forehead and temples. At the sound of my footsteps, his valet Loschek ran up and led me close to the dead body. With looks rather than with words, I interrogated him as to the cause of this tragedy; and the faithful servant, in order to give the lie to the rumour of suicide which had already been spread, lifted up the bandage. Inside either the right or the left temple—my recollection on that point is vague— there was a hole so large that you could have thrust your fist into it.
“The skull appeared to be smashed—shattered as if from a blow of a bottle or a big stick. It was horrible. The hair, the fragments of bone, had been driven into the brain. The wound gaped open beneath and behind the ear in such a fashion that it seemed materially impossible that it could have been self-inflicted. A suicide? Surely not! It was an assassination—I am absolutely positive of that.”
Count Nigra, it will be observed, confirms the medical certificate with regard to the position of the wound, but does not confirm the Grand Duke’s statement that broken bottle-glass protruded from it. Yet Count Nigra could hardly have failed to mention the bottle-glass if he had seen it. Probably it was not there; probably the reference to it is due to Princess Louisa’s conjectural emendation of her father’s story—or it may be that her father came to believe that he had seen it, because it fitted in with the popular legend which had become current.
That legend was, as is well known, that Rudolph had been killed with a blow from a champagne bottle in a quarrel which broke out in the course of a drunken orgy. According to some witnesses—if one can call them witnesses—the blow was struck by one of the boon companions. According to others, it was struck by Mary Vetsera herself, after a scene of jealousy; and the part which the boon companions played in the drama was to shoot Mary Vetsera. It cannot be said that Count Nigra’s description of the wound really confirms either version of the story. He made no scientific examination of the skull, but only glanced at it hurriedly; and the inferences which he drew from his hurried inspection may very well have been mistaken. But he talked; and his talk was obviously the ultimate source of all the various versions of the champagne bottle legend. They are all based upon that talk; and one can find no corroborative evidence of any one of them.
There is, in particular, no evidence that there was any drunken orgy whatsoever at Meyerling, or that, if there was, either Rudolph or Mary Vetsera took part in it. On the contrary, it was alleged by the boon companions, and assumed by the physicians, that the tragedy took place behind closed doors: that Rudolph, declaring himself to be fatigued, retired early to the apartment in which Mary—of whose presence at Meyerling the boon companions were unaware—was awaiting him. That is what Countess Marie Larisch says—her informant being Professor Wiederhofer; and her narrative corresponds, in all essentials, with the story told by the special investigator of the French paper L’Eclair. This is what the latter inquirer tells us:--
That legend was, as is well known, that Rudolph had been killed with a blow from a champagne bottle in a quarrel which broke out in the course of a drunken orgy. According to some witnesses—if one can call them witnesses—the blow was struck by one of the boon companions. According to others, it was struck by Mary Vetsera herself, after a scene of jealousy; and the part which the boon companions played in the drama was to shoot Mary Vetsera. It cannot be said that Count Nigra’s description of the wound really confirms either version of the story. He made no scientific examination of the skull, but only glanced at it hurriedly; and the inferences which he drew from his hurried inspection may very well have been mistaken. But he talked; and his talk was obviously the ultimate source of all the various versions of the champagne bottle legend. They are all based upon that talk; and one can find no corroborative evidence of any one of them.
There is, in particular, no evidence that there was any drunken orgy whatsoever at Meyerling, or that, if there was, either Rudolph or Mary Vetsera took part in it. On the contrary, it was alleged by the boon companions, and assumed by the physicians, that the tragedy took place behind closed doors: that Rudolph, declaring himself to be fatigued, retired early to the apartment in which Mary—of whose presence at Meyerling the boon companions were unaware—was awaiting him. That is what Countess Marie Larisch says—her informant being Professor Wiederhofer; and her narrative corresponds, in all essentials, with the story told by the special investigator of the French paper L’Eclair. This is what the latter inquirer tells us:--
“The guests came home late from shooting, and soon retired to their several rooms, the Crown Prince having complained of fatigue. He left them to go to his own room, where Mary Vetsera had been brought, without their knowledge, by the coachman Bratfisch. The party did not sup together, and no one else was at Meyerling that night.
“In the morning the Duke and the Count, astonished that the Archduke did not come down, and feeling uneasy because there was no response when they knocked at his door, caused the door to be forced. They saw the two corpses lying on the bed. The double suicide was evident. In their amazement, and in the hope of avoiding scandal, they wished to hush the matter up. They wished it to be believed that there had been an accident in the hunting field; so they spread a report to that effect, and, in order to gain credence for it, they caused Mary Vetsera’s body, fully dressed, to be removed in circumstances of mystery.”
The differences between this narrative and that of Countess Marie Larisch are of minor importance; the resemblances are striking. In particular it is to be noted that we get from the French journalist a contemporary confirmation of Countess Marie’s account of the mysterious disposal and burial of Mary Vetsera’s body. [2] Countess Marie adds many gruesome details; but the story which she supports is one which had already been published, albeit in an obscure quarter and without attracting attention. Even the detail that the body was dressed for removal was, as we have seen, in the Frenchman’s narrative.
We may take it as established, therefore, that the tragedy—whether murder or suicide—did, in fact, take place behind closed doors. There were no witnesses of what happened there; and the circumstantial evidence is, as we have seen, conflicting— the considerations which have to be balanced against each other being these:--
1. Both Rudolph and Mary Vetsera are said to have written letters announcing their intention of dying together.
2. The description of Rudolph’s wound, given in the medical certificates, indicates that it could not have been self-inflicted; and this view is confirmed by the testimony of Count Nigra.
On the whole it is the medical testimony which inspires the greater confidence. The certificates were challenged at the time; and the doctors then pledged their professional honour that they had signed nothing which was not in accordance with the facts—though they had no responsibility for the inferences drawn from the facts. The letters, on the other hand, are not all genuine; and even Countess Marie Larisch’s letter is, at the most, only evidence of what the lovers intended, or of what Mary Vetsera wished to be believed, but not conclusive proof of the way in which things actually happened. So that we are obliged to consider a possible alternative to the theory of double suicide. Did Mary Vetsera kill her lover and then take her own life—after first writing a letter to throw dust in the eyes of the world? Can we find any motive which might have induced her to do so?
A motive can be found; and it is in Countess Marie Larisch’s narrative that one finds it. That story which she tells of a conspiracy to usurp the throne of Hungary may perhaps supply the clue.
Suppose there had been, if not a plot in the full sense of the word, at least some loose talk and some compromising correspondence. Suppose Mary was “in it,” and really believed what she wished to believe—that the conspirators meant business, and that Rudolph was really working to have her crowned Queen of Hungary. Suppose Rudolph had said things—and written things—which gave some encouragement to that belief. Suppose Rudolph had realised the impossibility of the enterprise before finally embarking on it, and had contrived this secret interview for the purpose of telling Mary that he could not keep his promise— that she could only be his mistress on the same footing as any other mistress—and of recovering from her any documentary proof of his disloyal designs which she may have held.
If we may make those suppositions—and we need them all if we are to attach any meaning to Rudolph’s representation to Countess Marie that an interview with Mary might help him to avoid a mysterious peril—then we have all the material for a credible reconstruction of the drama. We picture Mary going to the rendez-vous with gloriously ambitious hopes, only to find the promised cup of happiness dashed from her lips; and we picture love momentarily turned to hate by the bitter blow of the disappointment. We see her pleading with Rudolph and reproaching him, and Rudolph, on his part, protesting his affection, but nevertheless opposing a sullen resistance to her entreaties. The rest of the scene proceeds as in a melodrama.
On the table by the bedside lies Rudolph’s pistol —the pistol which Rudolph always carried. Mary picks it up in an access of frenzy—or possibly of jealousy, for it is quite possible that she, as well as Stéphanie, had grounds for jealousy—vows that she will be avenged, and pulls the trigger. Rudolph falls, and she is horrified at the spectacle of her crime. She had forgotten—but now she realises— all that it means and all the consequences which it must entail for her. Love and fear impel her in the same direction, and drive her to the same act. She feels that she has no choice but to follow Rudolph into eternity, whether by firing a second shot or by swallowing a dose of poison. That assuredly is how a Juge d’Instruction, given the facts which we have had before us, would be tempted to “reconstitute the crime”—and also to explain the letter.
A melodramatic reconstitution doubtless; but that fact does not deprive it of credibility. Melodramas do happen, in real life as well as on the stage. We read of them in newspapers nearly as often as we witness them in theatres. Moreover, in this case, the whole story is melodramatic, and no interpretation of it is so improbable that it must necessarily be rejected. There are, of course, alternative possibilities. The first shot may have been fired by accident; and Mary Vetsera may have fired it as the first act in a concerted double suicide. But that she did fire it—whether by accident or by design—whether in a fit of passion or deliberately by agreement—seems as certain, if we believe the medical procès-verbaux, as anything connected with the mystery can ever be.
That is all that there is to be said about it; and perhaps it is all that can ever be known about it. What happened behind closed doors can, in the nature of the case, only be a matter of inference; and one is bound to come back to the fact that all the documentary evidence indirectly bearing on the tragedy is open to suspicion. The evidential difficulties, in short, may be summed up thus :--
1. Two medical certificates give two different descriptions of the wound.
2. The description of the wound given in both medical certificates differs from the description of it by Count Nigra, who, at any rate, had no motive for deceiving anyone.
3. While the descriptions of the wound are incompatible with the theory of suicide, correspondence in which the intention to commit suicide is clearly set forth has been published; but
4. The only one of those letters of the authenticity of which there is any evidence, may have been written with deliberate intent to deceive.
5. There is no agreement among those who quote the letters as to their exact text. The versions of the letters given in these pages are by no means the only versions which have been current. There are other longer versions, and versions which differ from those here preferred in various particulars. Even, therefore, if we could be sure that we had to do with genuine documents, the question would still remain whether the documents had not been doctored.
So we must leave the mystery, offering our own reconstruction of the drama for what it may be worth, but, at the same time, declining to accept without reserve the story currently told that the full and final solution of the secret is locked up, at the Hofburg, in an iron chest, which is to be opened after the lapse of fifty years. And yet even that story is not quite impossible; for there are two secrets, indicated by rumour, which may conceivably be guarded thus, with a view to disclosure at a time when the events to which they relate are remote enough to be treated as history :--
1. It was whispered, at one time, that the tragedy of Meyerling was due to the discovery that Rudolph and Mary were really brother and sister: that is to say, that Francis Joseph was really Mary’s father. The alleged iron chest might conceivably contain Francis Joseph’s acknowledgment of that relationship.
2. There is the rumour of which Countess Marie Larisch makes so much, of the plot to seize the Hungarian throne; and it is not inconceivable that the alleged iron chest may contain some secret police report bearing upon that subject.
Those are the possibilities—one can think of no others; and they are, both of them, exceedingly remote. The former of the two rumours, which is not, in any case, at all well accredited, strikes one as incompatible with the Baroness Vetsera’s alleged willingness that a liaison between her daughter and the Crown Prince should be “ arranged.” Not only might the idea of such a thing have been expected to revolt her, she would also have felt that she had “claims “ on the Emperor which dispensed her from the necessity of exploiting her daughter by such means. The latter rumour must be regarded as improbable on the ground that, if the alleged conspiracy had really existed, the secret would hardly have been so well kept for so long.
And yet the suggestion, though improbable, is not quite impossible. The secret police of Vienna are very suspicious and acute; and they are also as unscrupulous as they are polite. The idea that there ever was an actual plot worthy to be called a plot must indeed be discarded for the reasons already set forth; but the idea that there was loose talk and compromising correspondence of a quasi-seditious character is not so fantastic. The secret police may have opened letters, or overheard conversations, or even received information. If they had done so, they would naturally have reported their discoveries, even if these were rather intangible; and if it be true that there is, at the Hofburg, an iron chest, to be opened in the fulness of time, bearing upon the Meyerling affair, a report of the kind indicated is, after all, the thing most likely to be found in it.
The blow, however—whatever he knew or did not know—was bound, in any case to be a terrible one to Francis Joseph. When Count Hoyos drove up in a sleigh in the early morning with the news, he broke down and sobbed. Then he mastered himself, and gave the necessary orders, and presendy issued this proclamation to his people:--
We may take it as established, therefore, that the tragedy—whether murder or suicide—did, in fact, take place behind closed doors. There were no witnesses of what happened there; and the circumstantial evidence is, as we have seen, conflicting— the considerations which have to be balanced against each other being these:--
1. Both Rudolph and Mary Vetsera are said to have written letters announcing their intention of dying together.
2. The description of Rudolph’s wound, given in the medical certificates, indicates that it could not have been self-inflicted; and this view is confirmed by the testimony of Count Nigra.
On the whole it is the medical testimony which inspires the greater confidence. The certificates were challenged at the time; and the doctors then pledged their professional honour that they had signed nothing which was not in accordance with the facts—though they had no responsibility for the inferences drawn from the facts. The letters, on the other hand, are not all genuine; and even Countess Marie Larisch’s letter is, at the most, only evidence of what the lovers intended, or of what Mary Vetsera wished to be believed, but not conclusive proof of the way in which things actually happened. So that we are obliged to consider a possible alternative to the theory of double suicide. Did Mary Vetsera kill her lover and then take her own life—after first writing a letter to throw dust in the eyes of the world? Can we find any motive which might have induced her to do so?
A motive can be found; and it is in Countess Marie Larisch’s narrative that one finds it. That story which she tells of a conspiracy to usurp the throne of Hungary may perhaps supply the clue.
Suppose there had been, if not a plot in the full sense of the word, at least some loose talk and some compromising correspondence. Suppose Mary was “in it,” and really believed what she wished to believe—that the conspirators meant business, and that Rudolph was really working to have her crowned Queen of Hungary. Suppose Rudolph had said things—and written things—which gave some encouragement to that belief. Suppose Rudolph had realised the impossibility of the enterprise before finally embarking on it, and had contrived this secret interview for the purpose of telling Mary that he could not keep his promise— that she could only be his mistress on the same footing as any other mistress—and of recovering from her any documentary proof of his disloyal designs which she may have held.
If we may make those suppositions—and we need them all if we are to attach any meaning to Rudolph’s representation to Countess Marie that an interview with Mary might help him to avoid a mysterious peril—then we have all the material for a credible reconstruction of the drama. We picture Mary going to the rendez-vous with gloriously ambitious hopes, only to find the promised cup of happiness dashed from her lips; and we picture love momentarily turned to hate by the bitter blow of the disappointment. We see her pleading with Rudolph and reproaching him, and Rudolph, on his part, protesting his affection, but nevertheless opposing a sullen resistance to her entreaties. The rest of the scene proceeds as in a melodrama.
On the table by the bedside lies Rudolph’s pistol —the pistol which Rudolph always carried. Mary picks it up in an access of frenzy—or possibly of jealousy, for it is quite possible that she, as well as Stéphanie, had grounds for jealousy—vows that she will be avenged, and pulls the trigger. Rudolph falls, and she is horrified at the spectacle of her crime. She had forgotten—but now she realises— all that it means and all the consequences which it must entail for her. Love and fear impel her in the same direction, and drive her to the same act. She feels that she has no choice but to follow Rudolph into eternity, whether by firing a second shot or by swallowing a dose of poison. That assuredly is how a Juge d’Instruction, given the facts which we have had before us, would be tempted to “reconstitute the crime”—and also to explain the letter.
A melodramatic reconstitution doubtless; but that fact does not deprive it of credibility. Melodramas do happen, in real life as well as on the stage. We read of them in newspapers nearly as often as we witness them in theatres. Moreover, in this case, the whole story is melodramatic, and no interpretation of it is so improbable that it must necessarily be rejected. There are, of course, alternative possibilities. The first shot may have been fired by accident; and Mary Vetsera may have fired it as the first act in a concerted double suicide. But that she did fire it—whether by accident or by design—whether in a fit of passion or deliberately by agreement—seems as certain, if we believe the medical procès-verbaux, as anything connected with the mystery can ever be.
That is all that there is to be said about it; and perhaps it is all that can ever be known about it. What happened behind closed doors can, in the nature of the case, only be a matter of inference; and one is bound to come back to the fact that all the documentary evidence indirectly bearing on the tragedy is open to suspicion. The evidential difficulties, in short, may be summed up thus :--
1. Two medical certificates give two different descriptions of the wound.
2. The description of the wound given in both medical certificates differs from the description of it by Count Nigra, who, at any rate, had no motive for deceiving anyone.
3. While the descriptions of the wound are incompatible with the theory of suicide, correspondence in which the intention to commit suicide is clearly set forth has been published; but
4. The only one of those letters of the authenticity of which there is any evidence, may have been written with deliberate intent to deceive.
5. There is no agreement among those who quote the letters as to their exact text. The versions of the letters given in these pages are by no means the only versions which have been current. There are other longer versions, and versions which differ from those here preferred in various particulars. Even, therefore, if we could be sure that we had to do with genuine documents, the question would still remain whether the documents had not been doctored.
So we must leave the mystery, offering our own reconstruction of the drama for what it may be worth, but, at the same time, declining to accept without reserve the story currently told that the full and final solution of the secret is locked up, at the Hofburg, in an iron chest, which is to be opened after the lapse of fifty years. And yet even that story is not quite impossible; for there are two secrets, indicated by rumour, which may conceivably be guarded thus, with a view to disclosure at a time when the events to which they relate are remote enough to be treated as history :--
1. It was whispered, at one time, that the tragedy of Meyerling was due to the discovery that Rudolph and Mary were really brother and sister: that is to say, that Francis Joseph was really Mary’s father. The alleged iron chest might conceivably contain Francis Joseph’s acknowledgment of that relationship.
2. There is the rumour of which Countess Marie Larisch makes so much, of the plot to seize the Hungarian throne; and it is not inconceivable that the alleged iron chest may contain some secret police report bearing upon that subject.
Those are the possibilities—one can think of no others; and they are, both of them, exceedingly remote. The former of the two rumours, which is not, in any case, at all well accredited, strikes one as incompatible with the Baroness Vetsera’s alleged willingness that a liaison between her daughter and the Crown Prince should be “ arranged.” Not only might the idea of such a thing have been expected to revolt her, she would also have felt that she had “claims “ on the Emperor which dispensed her from the necessity of exploiting her daughter by such means. The latter rumour must be regarded as improbable on the ground that, if the alleged conspiracy had really existed, the secret would hardly have been so well kept for so long.
And yet the suggestion, though improbable, is not quite impossible. The secret police of Vienna are very suspicious and acute; and they are also as unscrupulous as they are polite. The idea that there ever was an actual plot worthy to be called a plot must indeed be discarded for the reasons already set forth; but the idea that there was loose talk and compromising correspondence of a quasi-seditious character is not so fantastic. The secret police may have opened letters, or overheard conversations, or even received information. If they had done so, they would naturally have reported their discoveries, even if these were rather intangible; and if it be true that there is, at the Hofburg, an iron chest, to be opened in the fulness of time, bearing upon the Meyerling affair, a report of the kind indicated is, after all, the thing most likely to be found in it.
The blow, however—whatever he knew or did not know—was bound, in any case to be a terrible one to Francis Joseph. When Count Hoyos drove up in a sleigh in the early morning with the news, he broke down and sobbed. Then he mastered himself, and gave the necessary orders, and presendy issued this proclamation to his people:--
“Deeply moved by a sorrow too profound for words, I humbly bow before the inscrutable decrees of a Providence which has chosen to afflict myself and my people, and I pray to Almighty God to grant to us all the courage to bear the load of our irreparable loss.”
And to his Hungarian Prime Minister Tisza, he wrote:--
“I have lost everything. I had placed my hope and my faith in my son. There remains to me now nothing but the sentiment of duty, to which I hope to remain faithful as long as my aged bones support me.”
He must have thought, indeed, at that hour, that the cup of his sorrows was full, and that the curse at last had done with him. But it was not so. In spite of that devotion to duty to which he had pledged himself, calamity after calamity was still to be heaped upon his head.
Notes
- Alland is quite close to Meyerling.
- The same story was also told, long ago, in Paris, to Mrs. Clarence Andrews, by Alexander Baltazzi.
Source: Francis Gribble, The Life of the Emperor Francis Joseph (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1914), 193-231.