THE REAL FRANCIS JOSEPH.*
A CRABBING water-colour painting, one of the last portraits ever taken of the ill-fated Duc de Reichstadt, the eaglet of M. Rostand's drama, represents him seated with a chubby two-year-old boy on his knee. That boy is the Emperor Francis Joseph, probably the only person living who can have had speech with the son of the great Napoleon, and certainly the most interesting survival in the Europe of to-day. He has been pursued consistently by misfortune, public and private; he has sounded the depths of national humiliation and domestic sorrow. Yet the Empire which he rules to-day is far stronger for offence and defence than the heritage into which he was thrust as a lad of nineteen, and the sixtieth year of his reign has been marked by a series of coups de theatre which, putting questions of morality aside, may well atone for Solferino and Sadowa. Austria, which imaginative publicists had long classed among the " sick men " of Europe, has quietly torn up the Treaty of Berlin, and not a hostile hand has been raised. The alliance of the two German Empires has imposed an influence on the Continent for a parallel with which we must go back to Napoleon at the zenith of his power. But to the eyes of M. Henri de Weindel the reign of Francis Joseph is simply a long record of " shattered principles " and " bankrupt policy." In these pages the Emperor is stripped of every claim to respect or affection. An unfaithful husband, an injudicious father, the plastic instrument of a domineering mother, the only virtue which is conceded to him is that of courage on the field of battle. The Tyrolese legends, " designed to portray his Imperial and Royal Majesty as a man of simple character, modest demeanour, big heart, and witty good-fellowship," are ruthlessly exposed. We are regaled with anecdotes which show him passionate, violent, and imperious, "yet, at least, just, upon reflection." Even here the author takes care to inform us that the Emperor's justice is rather the outcome of shrewd calculation than the prompting of simple good nature. " Deep-rooted egotism, coldness of heart, and narrowness of mind " are among the
lighter charges. We hold no brief for the head of the house of Hapsburg, but we refuse to accept this monstrous caricature, or the farrago of tittle-tattle out of which it is constructed. And we have no great liking for the class of book which professes to be inspired by persons "particularly well informed about the Court" who "strictly forbid any hint as to their identity." Even more objectionable are the absolutely imaginary conversations with which the narrative is burdened. What Francis Joseph said to his bride, what the Archduchess Sophia said to the Empress Elisabeth, what the Emperor's granddaughter said to the Emperor on occasions when no third party was present, are mere exercises in dialogue.
M. de Weindel is on less equivocal ground when he traces the tragedy of the Hapsburgs to that incessant marriage of
• The Real Francis Joseph : the Primes Life of the Emperor of Austria. By Henri de Weiztdel. English Version by Philip W. Sergeant. With Photo- ersvure Portrait and 44 other Portraits and Illustrations. London : John Long. • The Court of Louis ZIII. $y S . A Patmore. London; Methuen and CO.
;1155. net.] . -
near kin which is the bane of the Roman Catholic Royal houses.
We at home are sometimes tempted to grumble at the pro- visions of the Act of Settlement and the Royal Marriage Act, which in the past have restricted our marriageable Princes and Princesses to the circumscribed area of Continental Pro- testantism. But the scions of the Roman Catholic Monarchies are in still worse plight. "Marriages had all to be made with near relations because there were only five reigning families within the pale of the Church, the Hapsburgs, the Wittels- bachs, the Bourbons, the House of Savoy, and the Albertine line in Saxony." The Coburgs of Belgium have now been admitted into the magic circle, but fifty years ago they were taboo for the haughty Hapsburgs, who, moreover, found them- selves cut off for political reasons from the house of Savoy. "The two families in which degeneracy was most marked, because of the more frequent union between their members, were those of Hapsburg and of Wittelsba,ch, those precisely to which belonged Francis Joseph and Elisabeth." But the hereditary taint which generations of intermarriage seldom fail to bring must be held responsible for some of the most tragic events in the life of the Emperor and his Consort. M. de Weindel has his own version of the circumstances attending the death of the Archduke Rudolph : it is no more improbable than many other solutions of a secret which has been so tenaciously kept for the last twenty years. The most interesting, because the least ill-natured, picture in the book is that of the aged Emperor, spending quiet bourgeois evenings in the society of an old flame, the once- beautiful actress, Katherina Schratt, and making a fourth at whist for modest points with her and the two heads of the Viennese banking world. On one occasion the Emperor had left at home the case which holds the trabucos to which he restricts himself. Frau Schratt set before him a box of the finest Havanas belonging to one of the bankers. " The fellow must make a lot of money to be able to keep such expensive cigars," was the Emperor's comment. Punctually at nine o'clock the Royal carriage arrives, and Frau Schratt sees her old friend carefully down to the door :--
" Short as is the journey to the cold and stately Hofburg, it none the less calls back to mind a sorrowful picture of the Emperor's past life ; for the carriage passes the Capucin Monastery, where in the Hapsburg vault his son and wife lie buried, and the Augustinian Church, where both he and Rudolf were married. It may be that sometimes in the night as he drives past the church, he thinks of that dim wood where he looked for the first time on Elisabeth's glestraing tresses. It may be, too, that he seems to hear in the darkness the mocking voice of his cousin Sophia saying to him on the terrace at Possenhofen, 'Take care, cousin. If Black growls at you so much, you will have a bad name in the house !' The dogs have never ceased from that day to growl at Francis Joseph."
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