IN THE PUBLIC EYE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17335, 25 November 1916, Page 12

IN THE PUBLIC EYE.

PROMINENT PEOPLE OF THE PERIOD. " A very old man, and, I should say, a very sad one," was a description of the Emperor Francis Joseph written a few wcolvvS before the war came. There are people who say that tho assassination of the. Archduke Franz Ferdinand did not greatly distress the old man, because it solved nn extremely difficult problem for the Dual Monarchy, but it is impossible to believe that the Emperor should have wished tho problem solved in that shocking fashion. And the Emperor had had his share of sorrow, some of it due to his rigid adherence to tho traditions of his house, sonic of it clue to his own passions and temperament, and some ot it sneer in fortune. Ho seems to have been strictly trained, by a mother who was bent oil fitting him lor the high office he was to hold, and it is related that whenever the young Archduke threatened to behave in a manner unbecoming in a prince she scut him straightway to some secluded lodge, there to reflect on tho advantages of a life or siuuy ami rectitude, in dim course he. was trained for the army, undergoing a particularly .severe schooling, ana acquiring an intense loudness for the military life ami an equally intense devotion to the army and its interests. • The story of his accession to the throne is variously told. His uncle, Ferdinand 1., abdicated and his own father signed a declaration of renunciation. This much is in everv historv book. What is not in the history book's is the intrigue by which Archduchess Sophie of Bavaria, the mother of the young Emperor, brought about his succession. The Archduchess Sophie was a woman of great abilitv and strong character, quite the most influential personage at the Court, aud it ivas she who compelled the uncle to give place to the nephew. Ferdinand was mentally unequal to the task of governirg his distracted empire, and his removal was really desirable in tho int»re.sts ot his own people. And probably tho choice of the popular young soldier in preference, ro the young man's father was justified by the circumstances. But the fact remained that Sophie had to use something stronger than tact to accomplish her ends, and that she achieved it in spite of the opposition of statesmen who were certainly patriots and who might, be presumed' to know what was good for the country.

A biographical note concerning Francis Joseph, written, of course, from a detached point of view, was contributed to the "Fortnightly" some years ago by Mr Archibald Col'quhoun, who took nomo of the more important episodes of his life at their face value, and consequently missed certain essential facts of the Emperor's character. But, as a survey of the reign as it appeared to tho world in general Mr Colquhoun's article is full of interest. The most romarkabla feature of the Emperor's career he regarded as the change which took plate m his policy about his fortieth year. When ho succeeded his uncle in 184 S. as a hoy. o* eighteen, he gave no promiso of greatness either in intellect or in character. His chief interest v. as in soldiering. Later on he developed the common tendencies of his class and age. A sportsman, a gallant, a bigoted aristocrat, and clericalist, he lived the gay life of an Austrian noble, and he believed in absolutism.-' He seemed predestined to a leng, losing struggle against the growing forces of Liberalism. Then, in tho early sixties, he suddenly favoured constitutional methods. His ideas slowly but surely expanded to meet the spirit of the times until, at soventysoven, and in the fifty-ninth' year of his reign, he introduced universal suffrage in Austria.

It was almost with regret that Mr Colquhoun turned from the successful ruler, triumphing over difficulties and steering a. safe course through troubled waters, to-the luckless husband.and father. "He came to grief," we are told, "on the shoals of an unhappy marriage, and that although he married for love and chose ono of the best as well n,s one of the most beautiful of women. The storv has long been public property, and the Empress Elizabeth always had a large share of popular sympathy, " because her husband was undoubtedly tempted by other fair faces, and because, beautiful and romantic, she herself was chaste." Tho true causo of their unhappiness was, according to Mr Colquhoun, incompatibility of temperament, aggravated by the interference of friends and relatives, who were all on the side of the Emperor. After reading the eulogies of the. Empress's devoted attendants and apologists, Mr Colquhoun inclined to the belief that she was a .being far " too fine and good for human nature's daily food.". A moro commonplace wife would, he thought, have made a better husband of a man whose faults were due to bad training and influence rather than "to an evil nature.

However that may be, the Emperor was. in fact, deprived of the home life in which ho might have found solace from the heavy cares of his public duties. His private life was further darkened by an appalling series of tragedies in his own Habsburg and his mother's and wife's Bavarian family. Among these were the suicide of the mad King Louis of Bavaria., tho shooting of the Archduke Maximilian, who had been made Emperor of Mexico by Napoleon til., tho disappearance of another Archduke, who went to sea as .Tobann Orth, tho death of the Archduke Albreeht's daughter, whose dress caught fire from a cigarette she was smoking, and the death of tlie Duchess of Aleneon at the charity bazaar in Paris, in 1897. All these calamities occurred within the Emperor's immediate family circle. Tho crowning misfortunes of his life came in the suicide of his son, tho Crown Prince Rudolph in 1889. and the assassination of the Empress at Geneva nine years afterwards.

i The real '" private life "of the Emi poror for the last twenty-five years ! was- not within his family, nor at his palace, but at the house of his "friend." Madame Schratt, "an exactress, a middle-class of no special pretensions to beauty, and remarkable only lor her common-sense and | kind heart-." She had never striven I for place and power, like a Pompa- [ dour or a Lady Castlemaino, but lived a la bourgeoi.se near tho Palaco at Vienna, or the Emperor's country seat, at Tschl. "Her tact." said Mr Cblquhoun, "is so complete that she has been recognised, not only by the people, among whom she is most popular, b'.it in Court and society, and even -by Elizabeth herself, who visited her twieo perhaps to wonder what, it was this homely woman possessed which sbe, with all her beauty and intellect, lacked. A popular photograph, freely circulated in Austria, shows tho Emperor seated at breakfast with Madame Schratt, her dog on a chair between them." At the Schratt villa his Majesty was known as " the Colonel." There he went after his day's work to dine simply, drinking Pilsener beer with his meal, and one glass of claret after it. Then came a gamo of cards with one or two elderly men of the middle class, such as Herr Palmer, of the Land Bank; and Herr Taussig, the financier, who dropped quietly in. "Tho Schratt menage, despite its abstention from all interference with public affairs, has," Mr Colquhoun observed, "played an important role in bringing the Emperor into touch with intelligent and broad-minded men, and counteracting tho influence of tho Court and family cliques/'