Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess. Fischer Henry William

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СКАЧАТЬ as the waste of two million human lives, the loss of four millions in population, subsequently enabled the Prince of Wales to tie the price of a dukedom3 in diamonds around a French dancer's neck and to support a hundred silly harlots in all parts of Europe, who cares?

      According to Louise and – others, royalty is the meanest, the most heartless, the most faithless and the most unjust of the species – that in addition she herself disgraced its womanhood, after the famous Louise of Prussia rehabilitated queenship, is regrettable, but to call it altogether unexpected would be rank euphemism.

Louise's Character

      If Louise had lived at the time of Phryne, the philosophers would have characterized her as "an animal with long hair"; if he had known her, the great Mirabeau might have coined his pet phrase, "a human that dresses, undresses and – talks" (or writes) for Louise; as a matter of fact, she is one of those "Jansenists" of love who believe in the utter helplessness of natural woman to turn down a good looking man.

      Her great grand-uncle, Emperor Francis, recorded on a pane of glass overlooking the courtyard of the Vienna Hofburg his opinion of women in the brief observation: "Chaque femme varie" (Women always change).

      This is true of Louise and also untrue of her. While occupying her high position at the Saxon court she was fixed in the determination to make a cuckold of her husband, though Frederick Augustus, while a pumpkin, wasn't fricasseed in snow by any means.

      The process gave her palpitations, but, like Ninon, she was "so happy when she had palpitations."

Changed Lovers Frequently

      As to lovers, she changed them as often as she had to, never hesitating to pepper her steady romances by playing "everybody's wife," chance permitting, as she intimates naïvely towards the close of the Diary.

      Qualms of conscience she knows not, but of pride of ancestry, of insistence on royal prerogatives, she has plenty and to spare.

      "My great grand-aunt, Marie Antoinette, did this"; "my good cousins d'Orleans" (three of them) "allowed themselves to be seduced"; "ma cousine de Saxe-Coburg laughs at conventionalities," – there you have the foundation of the iniquitous philosophy of the royal Lais. And for the rest – when she is queen, all will be well.

Her Court – A Seraglio

      Louise's fixed idea was that, as Queen of Saxony, she had but to say the word to establish a court à la Catharine II; time and again she refers to the great Empress's male seraglio, and to the enormous sums she squandered on her favorites. If the Diarist had known that Her Majesty of Russia, when in the flesh, never suffered to be longer than twenty-four hours without a lover, Louise, no doubt, would have made the most elaborate plans to prevent, in her own case, a possible interregnum of five minutes even.

      She thought she held the whip hand because a king cannot produce princes without his wife, while the wife can produce princes without the king; besides Frederick Augustus was no paragon, and he who plants horns, must not grudge to wear them.

      A wanton's calculations, it will be argued, – but Louise's records show that her husband, the king-to-be, fell in with her main idea, – that he forgave the unfaithful wife, the disgraced princess, because, as Queen, her popularity would be "a great asset."

      And Americans, our women of whom we are so proud, are asked to bow down to such sorry majesties!

Sired and "Cousined" by Lunatics

      And is there no excuse for so much baseness in high places? Our royal Diarist offers none, but her family history is a telling apology.

      Be it remembered that Louise is not so much an Austrian as a Wittelsbacher of the royal house of Bavaria that gave to the world two mad kings, Louis II and Otho, the present incumbent of the throne, besides a number of eccentrics, among others Louise's aunts, the Empress Elizabeth and the Duchess d'Alencon, both dead; Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria, her cousin, was also undoubtedly insane, the result of breeding in and in, Austrian, Bourbon and Wittelsbach stock, all practically of the same parentage, in a mad mix-up, the insane Wittelsbachers predominating.

      To cap the climax, Louise has eighteen or nineteen insane cousins on her mother's side!

      Once upon a time Louise's prosaic and stupid great-uncle, as a young husband, felt dreadfully scandalized when his Queen, Marie Antoinette, bombarded him with spit-balls.

      "What can I do with her?" he asked "Minister Sans-culotte" Dumouriez.

      "I would spike the cannon, Sire," replied the courtier.

      "Enclouer le canon," if performed in time, might have saved Louise, but I doubt it.

Henry W. Fischer.

      KITH AND KIN OF THE EX-CROWN PRINCESS OF SAXONY

Louise's Own Family

      The royal woman whose life's history is recorded in this volume was born Louise Antoinette, Daughter of the late Grand Duke Ferdinand IV of Tuscany (died January 17, 1908) and the Dowager Grand Duchess Alice, née Princess Bourbon of Parma.

      Louise has four brothers, among them the present head of the Tuscany family, Joseph Ferdinand, who dropped the obsolete title of Grand Duke and is officially known as Archduke of Austria-Hungary.

      He is a brigadier general, commanding the Fifth Austrian Infantry, and unmarried.

      Better known is Louise's older brother, the former Archduke Leopold, who dropped his title and dignities, and, as a Swiss citizen, adopted the name of Leopold Wulfling. This Leopold is generally regarded as a black sheep.

      Louise more often refers to him in the present volume than to any other member of her family.

      He is now a commoner by his own, more or less enforced, abdication, as Louise is a commoner by decree of her chief-of-family, the Austrian Emperor, Francis Joseph, dated Vienna, January 27, 1903.

      A month before above date the Saxon court had conferred on Louise the title of Countess Montiguoso, while, on her own part, she adopted the fanciful cognomen of Louise of Tuscany.

      Of Louise's two remaining brothers, one, Archduke Peter, serves in the Austrian army as Colonel of the Thirty-second Infantry, while Archduke Henry is Master of Horse in the Sixth Bavarian Dragoons.

      Only one of Louise's four sisters is married, the oldest, Anna, now Princess Johannes of Hohenlohe-Bartenstein.

      The unmarried sisters are Archduchesses Margareta (31 years old), Germana (28 years old), Agnes (22 years old).

Mother Comes of Mentally Tainted Stock

      Louise's mother, née Princess Alice of Parma, is the only surviving sister of the late Duke Robert, who left twenty children, all living, and of whom eighteen or nineteen are either imbeciles or raving lunatics, the present head of the house, Duke Henry, belonging to the first category of mentally unsound.

      Louise's first cousin, Prince Elias of Parma, the seventh son, is accounted sound, but Elias's sister, Zita (the twelfth child), developed maniacal tendencies since her marriage to Archduke Karl Francis Joseph, heir-presumptive to the crown of Austria-Hungary.

Francis Joseph's Autocratic RuleLouise Formerly in Line of Austrian Succession

      Louise was in the line of the Austrian succession until, upon her marriage to the Crown Prince of Saxony (1891), she officially renounced her birthrights.

      Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary is Louise's grand-uncle as well as chief of the imperial family СКАЧАТЬ