"Golden Fleece"

What a treasure of a book I received as a gift last week! Bertita Harding’s “Golden Fleece” – the story of Franz Josef and Sissi of Austria. Apart from the wonderful feel and smell of the paper that only comes with ‘old’ books(this was published in 1939) the style and brilliance of the author is so appealing that it is amazing that she isn’t better known!

Written in the style of a novel but totally true to history, this book is a masterpiece of psychology, humour and sincere respect for its subjects.The style sometimes reminds me of Dickens – the little asides that are universally and timelessly amusing – but is far less heavy; and the story itself is told in such a captivating way that it is both hugely informative and easy to read. There are magical, but not verbose, descriptions and anecdotes, and each page reads like watching a film unfold. There are moments when I literally laugh out loud at some of the occasional comments (e.g. regarding Sissi’s parents: “Marriage had been difficult, a matter of mostly avoiding each other. Even so, eight children....bore witness to an occasional meeting...” or, of her father, Duke Max, “He rejoiced in the reputation of being the most unpractical man of his time.”) but – true to the formula of ‘make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry’ – there is such insight into the characters that you can feel Sissi’s grief and frustration without being allowed to succumb to it. Basically, the author grasps how both Emperor Franz Josef Empress Elizabeth felt at various times, so we understand exactly their position, but at the same time the author manages to point out (often with small humorous phrases) that their feelings were not necessarily their finest feelings.

Bertita Harding, about whom I can find very little information, must have been one of the most underrated authors of her age; and one of the most underrated authors of royal history. This book is really one to treasure!

Franz Josef and Queen Victoria

Had Queen Victoria been born a decade or so later and lived until 1914, I wonder would the First World War ever have happened.

Franz Josef of Austria was only 11 years younger than Queen Victoria and, like her, he was only 18 when he came to the throne and lived through some of the most momentous changes the world had ever seen (perhaps, in its way, similar to the reign of our present great Queen Elizabeth). During their reigns, their countries moved through so many scientific advances that the people hardly had time to keep pace with transformation from one way of life to another. The result was not merely a terrible mess of people suddenly finding themselves horrifically poor (after all, the 'poor' had always been present since the beginning of time) but also going through a whole rearrangement of the way society had been running for hundreds of years. Change almost invariably leads to discontent and tension. There are those who long for the dawn of a new era and those who fear the collapse of all they hold dear. The Age of Victoria and Franz Josef was probably a time of the those most profound change since the discovery of fire or the invention of the wheel! (And we are still racing, even more rapidly, through that era).

Apart from the obvious difference that Franz Josef was an autocrat and Victoria a constitutional monarch (though one who was not backward in coming forward in making her views known to politicians!), I think there are similarities but a difference that made all the difference in the long run. Franz Josef, in my view, was an honest and well-meaning man but he was deeply entrenched in old conformist ways. As a young man, dominated by his mother and her intransigent views, he was also a staunch Catholic, bound by the memory of the long-gone Holy Roman Empire. Basically, he was enslaved by tradition. He also came to the throne at a time of revolutions and must have felt the need then to take a firm stand. Victoria, on the other hand, threw off the shackles of her mother the minute she came to the throne and, thanks mainly to the influence of the incredibly wonderful Prince Albert, became slightly more tolerant and open to different views and different opinions. Life taught her to yield and adapt, whereas life seemed to teach Franz Josef to cling even more firmly to tradition.

More significantly to history, Queen Victoria had a finger in every pie all over Europe, due to the marriages of her children and grandchildren, but Franz Josef, having fewer children and being confined to Catholic marriages for them, lacked that ability to influence the rulers of other nations.

Franz Josef, though, like so many others, is one of those unfortunate monarchs whose whole life seemed to be one tragedy after another. I think, the more I read of him, that he was a 'good' man, who meant well and was greatly loved by his people and wanted to do his best for them but he never quite managed to assimilate his role as a husband and father with his role as Emperor, in the way the Queen Victoria managed to assimilate her role as mother and wife....and Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India.

Golly, what responsibility and what a time to have been living!

Did They Have to Beatify Karl?

I think it is rather unfortunate that the Catholic Church decided to beatify Karl, the last Emperor of Austria-Hungary, not because I do not admire this man, but because as soon as someone is turned into a saint (or on the way to becoming a saint) it always seems that their true personality and humanity is lost in the mirage of 'sanctity'. They seem to lose their immediate appeal as fellow human beings as they are placed on some kind of holy pedestal (and deemed 'worthy of imitation' - though how it is possible for the average person to imitate an Emperor of Austria is rather unclear).

Perhaps that kind of unexpected elevation is rather appropriate in Karl's case. When he was born in 1887, the likelihood of his coming to the throne was minimal. Crown Prince Rudolf was still alive (just about!) and several others stood between Karl and his great uncle, the aging Emperor Franz Josef. Even after Rudolf's tragic death at Mayerling, others stood between young Karl and the throne, most notably, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose murder not only raised Karl to the position of heir, but sparked the First World War.

I admire Karl for several reasons but primary because he was the sole member of the family to take the trouble to be present when the bodies of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were brought back to Vienna after their murder in Sarajevo. The vile minister, Monenuovo, who hated Franz Ferdinand, had arranged that their bodies should arrive in the middle of the night to avoid a public display of respect for the murdered archduke, but Karl was there. I think of him on that dreary platform, paying his genuine respects to the dead and grieving for Franz Ferdinand and Sophie's children. Karl also promised to take care of those children.

When, in the middle of the First World War, he became Emperor, he was seen by the war cabinet as a liability. He objected to the use of poison gas, the killing of civilians and he sought to make a separate peace. This, of course, is seen as treacherous in war time, but Karl, unlike many of those war-mongering ministers, had seen the slaughter first hand and - along with so many other ordinary soldiers - saw the pointlessness of it all.

He was a devoutly religious man, and his religion undoubtedly was an essential part of him, but I think that making him a saint is really the last thing this unassuming man would have wanted. It smacks of some kind of political motive to me and I hope that this very real human being, caught up in the trauma and tragedy of World War One, isn't turned into some kind of plaster-cast caricature of the interesting and well-meaning person that he was.