B008AITH44 EBOK (71 page)

Elisabeth’s feelings about Rudolf’s death varied. Once she told Amélie that Rudolf “was the greatest philosopher after all. He had everything, youth, riches, and good health, and he gave it all up.” At other times, she
saw his suicide “as such a disgrace that she would have liked to hide her face from all the world.”
⁸¹

Elisabeth’s mood grew increasingly disconsolate, her nerves stretched to the breaking point. Valerie: “I often worry about Mama now…. She says that Papa is over it and her ever-increasing sorrow was becoming a burden to him, he does not understand her and rues the day when she first saw him, to his misfortune. No power in the world can dissuade Mama from such ideas.”
⁸²

On the other hand, even such distant acquaintances as Countess de Jonghe remarked on the Emperor’s unusual cheerfulness. “The Emperor’s gaiety has been noticed by everyone; in addition: lively gaze, energetic behavior, more talkative than ever before. Was his posture forced? One could think so, could in any case hope so.”
⁸³
The Emperor regained his spirits in his love for Katharina Schratt, grew more relaxed, at times even humorous, and came to terms more easily with the catastrophe of his son’s death.

During a visit the Emperor and Empress paid to Munich in December 1885, the lack of harmony between them was evident. Amélie: “As so often in earlier times, I had occasion to notice once again that, without intending to, Aunt Sisi and Franz Joseph hurt each other so easily. He cannot understand her extraordinary, fiery nature, while she lacks all
understanding
for his simple character and practical turn of mind. And yet he loves her so much.”
⁸⁴

Marie Valerie, by now twenty-one years old, stood by helplessly as the daily friction continued. Though increasingly incensed with her father because of the ever more important position given to Katharina Schratt, she was able to write in her diary in the autumn of 1889, “If it was always difficult to keep up a conversation with Papa even halfway, it has become almost impossible since he was struck by the deep sorrow of this winter. … I understand that being with him, without any point of contact except their pain—and even this of such different sorts—oppresses Mama. On those occasions, she is even more desolate than when we are alone … when she thinks ahead and sees years of this life stretching before her.”
⁸⁵

Valerie longed to get “out of this sad atmosphere into a more healthy sphere of action.”
⁸⁶
Her parents’ unhappiness in their marriage was a heavy burden on her. “I tell myself in deepest sorrow that this heavy suffering, instead of bringing … my parents closer together, has separated them even more (because neither understands the pain of the other).”
⁸⁷

It was in this very period of abysmal despair that the disturbing news arrived of the hopeless state of Gyula Andrássy’s health. In February 1890,
he died. Elisabeth visited his widow in Budapest; she told Valerie “that it was not until now that she knew what she had in Andrássy; for the ist time she felt completely abandoned, without adviser or friend.”
⁸⁸

Three months later—in May 1890—Elisabeth rushed to the deathbed of her sister Helene Thurn und Taxis in Regensburg. Valerie recorded the sisters’ last conversation.

Thirty-seven years had passed since the summer in Bad Ischl that had determined their lives. Both sisters had been surrounded by splendor and glitter, immense material wealth and an enormous inner void. After a short, happy marriage, Helene had been a widow for over twenty years. Her spirits were darkened by depression and melancholy. Helene’s last words, made a deep impression on the Empress: “Ah, yes, but life is a sorrow and a misery.”

Elisabeth’s increasing longing for death saddened all those close to her. Valerie: “Mama will probably never again be as she was at one time; she envies Rudolf his death, and day and night she longs for her own.”
⁹⁰
A month later: “Mama says that she is too old and too tired to struggle, her wings are singed, and the only thing she wants is rest. It would be the noblest deed if all parents would immediately kill every newborn child.”
⁹¹

In October 1889, a circular was sent to all the Austrian representatives abroad informing them of the Empress’s wish that any felicitations on her name days and birthdays be omitted, “not only in the immediate future but for all time.” At the end of 1889, when the official year of mourning was coming to an end, the Empress gave away all her light-colored gowns, umbrellas, shoes, scarves, purses, and all accessories to Gisela and Valerie. She kept only the plain mourning outfits; for the rest of her days she did not wear colored dresses again.
⁹²
Her only concession was a simple pearl gray dress at Valerie’s wedding and at the christening of Valerie’s first child, little Elisabeth (Ella).

She also gave away her jewelry—the wealth of pearls, emeralds,
diamonds.
Most of these pieces went to her two daughters and to her
granddaughter
Erzsi. But she also remembered such relatives as her Bavarian sister-in-law Marie José, who was given a brooch with the remark, “It is
a remembrance of the time when I was alive.”
⁹³
The Empress was
determined
to spend the years that were left her as a
mater
dolorosa
, always dressed in black, far from all court splendor. The German ambassador in Vienna commented, “The Emperor puts up with even these regrettable oddities with great resignation and patience.”
⁹⁴

Elisabeth felt the marriage of her favorite daughter, Valerie, as a further blow of fate. “Mama seems dazed by deep melancholy, and all the more so because she can never understand why anyone would want to be married and would expect any good from a marriage.”
⁹⁵
Elisabeth left no doubt that she “finds marriage unnatural,” as the young bride confided to her diary.
⁹⁶
For Valerie, who had inherited her father’s practical cast of mind and who was looking forward to marriage, this melancholy, overwrought mother was a great emotional burden.

Marie Valerie’s wedding to Archduke Franz Salvator took place at the end of July 1890 in the parish church of Bad Ischl. Elisabeth as well as Valerie had forbidden all court ceremonial of the sort that had been taken for granted at Gisela’s and Rudolf’s weddings in Vienna. There was not even a nuptial mass—only a quiet mass for the immediate families
preceding
the wedding ceremony. This, too, was at the express wish of the Empress, who considered the usual solemn nuptial mass “too long.” Among the flower girls was little Erzsi, the Crown Prince’s daughter, barely seven years old. Anton Bruckner, whom the young Archduchess admired extravagantly and whom she sponsored, played the organ.

Valerie’s happiness was evident to see. She was the only child of the Emperor and Empress who married without court considerations and for love. Elisabeth, disconsolate at the loss of her favorite daughter, cautioned Valerie’s mother-in-law, Archduchess Marie Immaculata, even on the
wedding
day, not to visit the young couple during the honeymoon period “and not to interfere in anything.”
⁹⁷

Elisabeth’s visits to her daughter were infrequent and short. Time and again, she pointed out that a mother-in-law could only interfere with a young couple’s happiness. To Valerie, who always urged her mother to stay longer at Lichtenegg, she said, “precisely because she liked it so much here, she should not let herself get used to it. A seagull did not fit in a swallow’s nest, and a serene, happy family life was not her fate!”
⁹⁸

The Empress persisted in her conviction that now she had lost all her children.