Fantastic legends of the Meyerling tragedy—Talks with the Crown Prince’s valet—Foolish story given by Berliner Lokal Anzeiger—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?
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:—
“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 della 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:—
“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.[4] 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.
[4] The same story was also told, long ago, in Paris, to Mrs. Clarence Andrews, by Alexander Baltazzi.
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?