B008AITH44 EBOK (31 page)

Because of her lowly origins, Ida could not become a lady-in-waiting. Someone thought up the subterfuge of first naming Ida to be a canoness, which entitled her at least to the title of
Frau
, and then to appoint her officially “reader to Her Majesty,” beginning with a monthly salary of 150 guldens in addition to board and lodging. Of course, Ida never read to the Empress.

Sisi’s letters to Ida, filled with tenderness, are usually headed by the address (in Hungarian), “My sweet Ida!” The letters are exceedingly long (to her husband, for example, Sisi wrote much shorter and usually more sober notes) and contain such remarkable sentences as “I think of you so much, during the long hairdressing, during my walks, and a thousand times a day.”
⁵
(Only fragments of Elisabeth’s letters to Ida Ferenczy survive. Ida burned most of them, presumably the most significant ones; the few that were preserved were destroyed during the Second World War except for a few scraps.)

One thing is certain: Little Ida was an intimate of the Hungarian liberals who were working for a “compromise.” Chief among these were Gyula Andrássy and Ferencz Deák. And Ida’s entry into the Viennese Hofburg was the beginning of Sisi’s enthusiasm for what the Hungarians called
conciliation
—reestablishment of the old Hungarian special privileges, and Franz Joseph’s coronation as King of Hungary. Conversely, Ida Ferenczy kept the Hungarians minutely informed concerning the relative strengths within the imperial family.

This relationship between the Empress of Austria and Ida Ferenczy, so crucial in political terms, was certainly carefully cultivated on the part of Hungary (that is, especially by Andrássy and Deák). They were very clever at exploiting for their own purposes the young Empress’s isolation at the Viennese court and her differences with the anti-Hungarian Archduchess Sophie. In the conflict between the Empress and the court, Ida was the first person who from the outset unequivocally sided with Sisi. She made no attempts at mediation, as Count Grünne had done in his time. She had no family ties to the high nobility, as did the ladies-in-waiting who, until this time, had constituted the Empress’s entire world. (Even Sisi’s friend Lily Hunyady, by now married to Count Walterskirchen, belonged to a faction of the Viennese aristocracy in spite of her Hungarian origins.) Ida stayed far away from all gossip, remained aloof from everyone at court, even distant, was devoted with her whole heart and soul to her mistress and friend (and remained so even after Elisabeth’s death). No wonder that Ida Ferenczy soon became one of the most bitterly hated people in the
Hofburg
. Given Sisi’s unshakable affection, however, the dislike did not
particularly
trouble Ida.

The twenty-seven-year-old Empress spent many hours a day with her new “reader.” Ida had to be present especially during the hairdressing and hair washing—and to use the time for Hungarian conversation, which the chambermaids and hairdressers in the room did not understand. Hungarian became something like a secret code between the two women. After only a few weeks, Countess Almassy wrote to Hungary, “Ida is delighted with the Empress’s good pronunciation, she is also said to speak Hungarian quite fluently—in a word, they are both pleased with each other.”
⁶

*

As the first step toward a reconciliation between the King and Hungary, the politicians proposed a visit by Franz Joseph to Budapest. Ida had spent only a few weeks with the Empress when she persuaded her mistress of the necessity of such a visit.

In June 1865, Franz Joseph, after months of urging on the part of the Hungarians (and of his wife), actually did go to Budapest and started to make concessions. He began by abolishing military jurisdiction, which still governed Hungary instead of civil law; then he proclaimed an amnesty for offenses against the laws governing the press.

These small steps, however, were not enough to satisfy the
Hungarians
. They did not drop their demand for reestablishment of the
Hungarian
constitution and for the coronation. On this point, all the
Hungarian
parties were agreed. They closed ranks behind Deák—as did the
Hungarians
who lived in Vienna, and each in his way worked for conciliation.

Ida Ferenczy was not only an enthusiastic partisan of Deák; she also knew him through her family. Ida’s admiration for the “sage” was passed on to the Empress. In June 1866, Ida sent to Hungary for a portrait of Deák with his signature in his own hand. “I will say in confidence that Her Majesty wishes to have it, but it must not become known, so that the newspapers will not write about it, which is not permitted,” she noted in her request.
⁷
Deák’s picture hung over Elisabeth’s bed in the Hofburg until her death.

In the mid-1860s, for reasons of age, Deák passed on his most important political offices to Count Gyula Andrássy. Andrássy, too, kept up a regular correspondence with Ida Ferenczy, assuming the role of fatherly friend. Elisabeth knew Gyula Andrássy quite well from Ida’s stories long before meeting him. She was informed not only about his political ideas, but also about his adventurous private life, which frequently merged with his political activities. Andrássy did not return to Hungary from exile until 1858—after the amnesty of his death sentence.

In 1849, at Schwechat, Andrássy fought with Kossuth against the
imperial
troops. In the 1860s, his followers tended to minimize this part of his past as a “youthful prank,” but understandably, it kept the mistrust of him alive at the Viennese court. Also in 1849, wearing the uniform of a colonel in the Honved (the Hungarian national army, which fought against the imperial troops), he had gone to Constantinople on instructions from the revolutionary government in order to prevent the handing over of the Hungarian emigrants to Austria (a mission he executed successfully). When the Austrian and Russian troops were victorious against the Honved, Andrássy was condemned to death for high treason. His name was nailed to the gallows by the executioner—a further romantic detail to delight the ladies of the Parisian salons, who fluttered around the “handsome hanged man” (
le
beau
pendu
)
in his exile.

In exile, first in London, then in Paris, Andrássy flourished. Unlike so many of his compatriots, he had no need to earn a living by odd jobs. His mother sent ample funds from Hungary, and the fact that he was not only an aristocrat but also a most witty companion, with splendid good looks and perfect fluency in Hungarian, German, French, and English opened the doors to all the distinguished homes.

In England he could immediately afford to acquire saddle horses and to play “with delightful elegance the homeless person” on Derby Day, as his adversaries mocked.
⁸
There is no need to mention that always and
everywhere
he exploited the quick effect of his charm to extract political information.

The court of Napoleon III knew Andrássy as few others did. It was also in Paris that he met his wife. Of course, she was an aristocrat, a Hungarian, and the most celebrated beauty after Empress Eugénie: Countess Katinka Kendeffy. With her, Andrássy returned to Budapest as the adored Martyr of the Revolution—and immediately won a place for himself politically, without having to work for it. Offices and honors were virtually heaped on him.

The years as an émigré had put him in touch with the powerful men in Europe. He was skilled in making his way in Western European diplomatic circles. The liberal Hungarian party—which was deeply rooted among the simple people, thanks to Deák—needed a man like Andrássy, who had ties to both the aristocracy and ruling circles abroad. Further, Andrássy was a man with the very best connections to the press (after all, he had written for years for the newspaper
Pesti
Naplo
) and renowned as a witty speaker. His political adages became widely quoted, such as his pronouncement on the neo-absolutism of the young Emperor Franz
Joseph
, “The new Austria resembled a pyramid that had been stood on its head; can it come as a surprise, then, that it cannot stand straight?” As early as 1861, when Austria was still vigorously defending her positions in Italy and Germany, Andrássy coined the remark, which would become famous, that “the double-headed eagle will not flutter over Rome, Tuscany, Hessia, and Holstein, where the imperial government sent it, perhaps for the glory of the army, but not in the interest of the people’s welfare.” The “defensive position of Austria was a European interest”—this was a renunciation of the Italian and German policies, espousing instead concentration on the lands of the Danube monarchy.
⁹

Andrássy was a man of large ideas and concepts, no friend of painstaking detail. But he defended his ideas with confidence and spirit. Few men in public life deserve the epithet of “political sensualist” as much as Andrássy. He was as vain as a prima donna and assiduously cultivated the image of being irresistible—irresistible to his compatriots, who admired him;
irresistible
especially to women, who chased after him.

A great many contradictory statements apply to Andrássy’s personality. The Hungarians turned him into a national hero, non-Hungarians often saw him as a villain. Count Hübner, for example, who knew him in Paris, wrote in his diary, “Personally he is not unlikable, he has a touch of the bohemian and the gentleman, of the sportsman and gambler. He looks like
a conspirator, and yet, at the same moment, like a man who says everything that is going through his mind. He is the boldest liar of his day and at the same time the most indiscreet of braggarts.”
¹⁰

*

Andrássy’s and Elisabeth’s paths first crossed in January 1866. She was twenty-eight years old, Andrássy was forty-two.

Hungarian matters were in a state of flux. After the Emperor had made concessions during his visit to Hungary, a delegation of the Hungarian parliament, headed by the Prince Primate, traveled from Hungary to Vienna to officially invite the Empress for a visit and to bring belated good wishes on her birthday (which she had, once again, spent in Munich). Andrássy was a member of this delegation, being at that time vice president of the Hungarian Chamber of Deputies. The deputation, preceded by imperial and royal court and chamber heralds, strode ceremoniously through the anterooms, and the ranks of Imperial and Royal Household Guards, to reach the apartments of Her Majesty. In the last anteroom, they were greeted by the Empress’s chamberlain, who led them into the
audience
chamber. The encounter was marked by theatrical effects. Andrássy, wearing the gold-embroidered ceremonial dress of the Magyar aristocracy (the so-called Attila), his coat embroidered with precious gems, spurs on his boots, a tiger skin over his shoulders, was flanked by the Prince Primate, the Greek-Orthodox bishop, and other deputies. Even in this normally ornate setting, he stood out by virtue of his casual, man-of-the-world appearance, his somewhat gypsylike wild aura.

Sisi presented herself as a fairy-tale princess. Her Hungarian national costume was given a romantic interpretation: The white silk dress and black bodice were trimmed with rich lacings of diamonds and pearls. Over it she wore a white lace apron, and on her head a Hungarian bonnet. A diamond crown adorned her forehead. She stood under the canopy,
surrounded
by her chatelaine and eight specially selected attendant ladies, most of them Hungarian. She was every inch the Queen of Hungary.

To everyone’s astonishment, the improvised speech in which she
expressed
her gratitude for Hungary’s good wishes was in faultless
Hungarian
. Enthusiastic shouts of “
Elje!
” followed her address.

That evening, the Hungarian deputation was invited to dine at court. For this occasion, Sisi made her appearance in a white dress with a train, pearls braided into her long hair. At the after-dinner reception, both Franz Joseph and Elisabeth “were gracious enough to converse with each member of the deputation individually at some length,” as the newspapers reported. It was the first conversation between the Empress and Gyula Andrássy—
in Hungarian, of course. Later, Andrássy made public the details of his conversation with the Empress, including Elisabeth’s widely quoted
statement
, “You see, when the Emperor’s affairs in Italy go badly, it pains me; but when the same thing happens with Hungary, that is death to me.”
¹¹

Ida Ferenczy had done her job well. Andrássy knew that in Elisabeth he had found an advocate of the Hungarians’ special demands. These were anything but modest, taking the rights of the non-Hungarian peoples of the monarchy not at all into consideration. Emperor Ferdinand, Franz Joseph’s predecessor, had himself crowned twice: as King of Bohemia in Prague and as King of Hungary in Pressburg. Now, however, the matter was restricted to coronation as King of Hungary and to Hungary’s demands (from the Bohemian point of view, quite outrageous) for parity with everything that was non-Hungarian (that is, a significantly larger as well as economically much more important region).

To the displeasure of the Viennese Court Party, in late January 1866, the Emperor and Empress undertook a visit to Hungary that was to last several weeks. It was Sisi’s first sight of Budapest since 1857—that is, in nine years. The times had changed, the climate between Vienna and
Budapest
had not improved. A solution to the years-long conflict was to be hoped for in the near future.

The program for the Hungarian visit was a strenuous one for the visitors from Vienna. While Elisabeth groaned about every official reception in Vienna, feeling it to be a burden and a limitation of her personal freedom, she disciplined herself here in Hungary, submitting to her role as queen. Admittedly, Gyula Andrássy was always near her. And wicked tongues sent word from Budapest to Vienna on how well the two conversed with each other during the receptions and salons—speaking in Hungarian, of course, so that Sisi’s ladies-in-waiting understood none of it. Adjutant General Crenneville, who was along on the trip, wrote angrily to his wife in Vienna that during the court ball, in the royal castle of Budapest, the Empress had spoken for a quarter of an hour in Hungarian with Andrássy, and he stressed this piece of news by following it with three exclamation points.
¹²