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 Stéphanie—Disappointment and disillusion—Stéphanie’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.
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:
“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 life-time. 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 off 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 in 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-in-law 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.”