Franz-Josef’s chief recreation was in rural pursuits, shooting above all, and he was never happier than roving the woods above Ischl with his gun, leading the simple life. His other love was the theatre, and its ladies, and the close companion of his old age was an actress, Frau Schratt, to whom he was so closely attached that he became known as "Herr Schratt".
His marriage to Elisabeth of Bavaria, the glamorous "Sissi" or "Sisi", began as a fairy tale and ended in unhappiness and tragedy. We have Flashman’s authoritative word for it that she was a rare beauty, although some of her portraits suggest that she was strikingly pretty rather than classically perfect. Franz-Josef fell in love with her at first sight, but he was not a faithful husband, and while his teenage bride never paid him back in kind, she was too lively and spirited to be a docile little Empress. Quite apart from Franz-Josef’s infidelities (which did in fact lead to her infection) there were causes enough of disagreement. Sissi detested the ultra-formal etiquette of a hostile court, was disliked by her mother-in-law, developed strong Hungarian sympathies, and had a decidedly eccentric streak in her nature, all of which combined to bring about the imperial couple’s estrangement. The adoration in which she was held, especially in Hungary, probably did not help.
She took to wandering about Europe, cruising the Mediterranean and hunting in England and Ireland, a royal gypsy admired not only for her looks and charm but for her generous interest in charitable causes, and for that wayward independence which had so shocked Vienna. She was a fearless horsewoman, an expert gymnast who worked out regularly in a portable gym, a health-and-beauty fanatic who wrote poetry, suffered periodic bouts of ill-health and depression, and all too often gave signs of that instability which led Flashman to doubt her sanity.
Elisabeth bore Franz-Josef three daughters and a son, Rudolf, who is remembered only as the chief actor in the tragedy of Mayerling, where he took his own life and that of his mistress in 1889. Nine years later Elisabeth was stabbed to death by an anti-royalist fanatic at Geneva. She was sixty years old. (See Henri de Weindel, The Real Francis-Joseph, 1909; Francis Gribble, Life of the Emperor Francis Joseph, 1914; Gordon Brook-Shepherd, Royal Sunset, 1987; A. de Burgh, Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, 1899; Andrew Sinclair, Death by Fame, 1998.)
Notes
[1]. Henri Stefan Oppert Blowitz (1825-1903) was Paris correspondent of The Times from 1875 to 1902. A Bohemian Jew, born of a good family in what is now Czechoslovakia, he worked as a teacher in France before becoming a journalist almost by accident, and showed that he possessed to a remark-able degree that combination of talents that makes a first-class reporter: immense energy and curiosity, a nose for news, and that mysterious gift of inspiring confidence which makes people talk. He had contacts at the highest level all over Europe, a prodigious memory, a brass neck, and great ingenuity (some said lack of scruple) which together raised him to a unique position in his profession.
Flashman has drawn him faithfully, and plainly had some affection and considerable respect for the tiny, rotund, charming, bombastic, and rather comic eccentric, whose love of good living, susceptibility to female beauty, delight in extravagant dress, and generous good nature endeared him to many; naturally, he inspired considerable jealousy in his rivals, and was not without detractors to question both his methods and ability. That Blowitz the brilliant and hard-headed reporter and interviewer was at the same time an incurable romantic with a taste for melodrama and love of the sensational, is obvious from his Memoirs, a highly entertaining work made up of material published in his lifetime and episodes dictated in his last year; he kept no diaries, and is said to have taken a note only rarely.
How far the Memoirs are to be trusted is a nice point. Flashman was familiar with them, but is no guide to their reliability; part of his story is identical in outline with one chapter of the Memoirs, but since Blowitz is the source in both cases, this means nothing. The enthusiastic Bohemian was never one to spoil a good tale for want of dramatic colouring, and Frank Giles, a later Times Paris correspondent, whose biography of Blowitz is admirably fair and meticulously researched, describes the Memoirs as a remarkable collection of fact and fiction, and echoes the feeling of a former Times proprietor that, at times, "the facts have collapsed under the sheer weight of a powerful imagination". Much of what Blowitz wrote can never be checked, and there is no knowing how great a part his vivid imagination played in what he told Flashman, who seems to have believed him, for what that is worth. I do not hesitate to cite Blowitz in these footnotes, for whatever his failings he was at his best the most superior kind of journalist -, a real reporter.
Blowitz’s obsession with destiny, etc., his tales of adventures with Marseilles communards, mysterious European royalty, and his kidnapping by gypsies, are to be found in the Memoirs; the story that he and his lover threw the lady’s husband overboard in Marseilles harbour is told by Prince von Bulow, later German Chancellor, who is not regarded as an invariably reliable source. (See Blowitz’s My Memoirs (1903); Frank Giles, A Prince of Journalists (1962); Prince von Bulow, Memoirs, 1849-1897 (1932), which contains a fine picture of Blowitz in his working clothes.)
[2]. When and where Flashman served in the French Foreign Legion has not yet emerged from his Papers. Several references (like the present one) suggest North Africa, but it is not impossible that he was with the Legion in Mexico c. 1867, when he was aide-de-camp to the ill-fated Emperor Maximilian. "Au jus!" was the cry of the coffee orderlies at reveille, and "the sausage music" is presumably a reference to the Legion’s march, Tiens, voila du boudin. (See also Note 13.)
The authority for Grant’s meeting with Macmahon, and their total failure to communicate, is Grant himself. At least they bowed, and shook hands; Grant’s aversion to hand-shaking was notorious, as was his taciturnity. (See From the Tan Yard to the White House, by William M. Thayer (1886).)
[3]. In 1878 Sir Stafford Northcote’s Budget, described as "unambitious", increased the duty on dogs and tobacco and raised income tax by 2d; Mrs Brassey published "The Voyage of the Sunbeam", an account of her round-the-world cruise by yacht; the phonograph ("an instrument which prints sound for subsequent reproduction by electricity") was a popular novelty; and Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore had its first night on May 25 at the Opera Comique. The great hit of the show was "He is an Englishman", which became "almost a second national anthem".
[4]. As usual with his summaries of international affairs, Flashman’s account of events in the Balkans, the Russo-Turkish war, and the Treaty of San Stefano, is sketchy and racy, but accurate in its broad essentials. The treaty, reflecting Russia’s Panslavic ambition to bring the Balkans under Russian control, was hard on the defeated Turks, and was opposed by Austria and Britain. A conference of the European Powers had been in prospect for some time, but was jeopardised by Russia’s objection to a British demand that the San Stefano settlement should be submitted to discussion by the Powers. Largely through the "honest broker" efforts of Bismarck, the German Chancellor, an understanding was reached between Britain and Russia, and the Congress of Berlin was held in June and July of 1878 to revise the treaty and achieve a balance in South-eastern Europe.