Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (81 page)

The queen’s remark about stepping out onto the balcony refers to the iconic tradition for members of the British royal family to appear on Buckingham Palace’s balcony after the ceremony to greet the cheering masses. This much-loved tradition was in place as early as 1858, when Queen Victoria’s daughter Vicky married Fritz. Since that time—with the notable exception of the prolonged court mourning for Prince Albert after 1861—almost every royal couple has followed suit and made the appearance.

After their daughter’s marriage, George and Mary shrank from public life. Now in middle age, the couple who had fallen in love during the reign of Queen Victoria now had trouble understanding the new generation that was taking control of the Roaring Twenties. Mary and George preferred quiet evenings spent at Buckingham Palace reading, knitting, or sipping tea. Although they continued their official duties with enthusiasm, “in private the King and Queen preferred dignified seclusion, eating alone with each other, protected by the walls of their palaces from the post-war kaleidoscope of socialism, jazz and fast young women.”
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Their son Bertie was particularly concerned about his parents. He wrote to his brother David the day of their sister’s wedding.

Things will be very different here, now that Mary has left & Papa & Mama will miss her too terribly, I fear, but it may have a good effect in bringing them out again into public. I feel that they can’t possibly stay in & dine together every night of their lives & … I don’t see what they are going to do otherwise, except ask people here or go out themselves. But we shall know more about this as days go on.
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The days came and went, but there was little sign that the king and queen were changing their ways. Their comfortable domestic routine from their years as newlyweds was resurrected at Buckingham Palace. It would serve them well for many years as additions to their family arrived. But in only a few short years, this bliss would be shattered and would threaten the British monarchy with its greatest crisis in modern history.

Once Archduke Robert was reunited with his family in Funchal, the Habsburgs moved out of Reid’s Hotel into a more permanent home. A local banker offered them the use of his estate, the Villa Quinto, perched nearly two thousand feet high on a mountainside overlooking Funchal. Constantly damp and plagued with mildew, it was barely livable for a young family. There was no electric lighting, and the only running water was on the first floor and in the kitchen; most of the time, it was freezing cold. To conserve the little bit of hot water they did have, Zita washed her children’s clothes only once a week. She made it a habit to dress them in dark fabrics so that dirt would not be as noticeable. Communication was also a constant problem. Charles and Zita wanted to keep abreast of events in Austria and Hungary, but the only way they could contact the outside world was to send letters down the mountain into Funchal via automobiles or ox carts, but this was something they could not afford.

Lack of money was perhaps the greatest crisis facing the Habsburgs. There was a heated debate among the Allied powers over what the imperial family would do for money. Colonel F. B. Mildmay—a British member of Parliament who was no fan of the Habsburgs—unexpectedly took up their cause. In a memo to Lord Cecil Harmsworth, the undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, Mildmay explained why Britain had a responsibility to Zita and her family:

I am not out to sympathize with the fallen rulers of enemy countries, but I am anxious to know whether, directly or by implication, the British government, in common with those of our Allies, made itself responsible at [the 1919 peace conference of] Versailles for receipt by the family of the late Austrian Emperor of the bare means to live. I am told, on authority which to me is unquestionable, that if any responsibility does lie with us, and with the powers who signed at Versailles, are open to a charge of culpably ignoring it.…

I suggest, but I may be quite wrong, that the powers banished the Emperor to this far island and then washed their hands of him, not troubling as to how he was to live.… The Austrian Government then seized their private fortune and property, and ever since 1918 the family has been living on the proceeds of the Habsburg family jewellry[
sic
] which is not very valuable. When they got to Madeira, little was left, so that real want and distress compelled their acceptance of the free house…at which moment [the emperor,] his wife and six or seven children had nothing but starvation to contemplate.…

I am under the impression that they are still left without means of any kind, and that the [family is] all but destitute.
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Mildmay’s letter was enough to get the attention of the British government. Lord Curzon, the foreign secretary, used his influence to push through a final annual income for the Habsburgs. The sum of £20,000 per year was settled upon. The Entente decided that the money would come in equal shares of £5,000 from the four successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and the now-unified Romania. This amount would have made the Habsburgs reasonably comfortable, but the four countries refused to pay a single pound, leaving them with almost no source of income.

The lack of money meant the food situation was dire. The Habsburgs lived almost entirely off of vegetables and puddings or jams that Zita made herself. The journey into Funchal was so long and expensive that they could not afford to get meat for the children, who were beginning to languish. Added to this perilous situation was Zita’s eighth pregnancy, which was in its third trimester. Since the empress and her family could not afford the basic necessities of meat and hot water, there was no possibility they could pay for a doctor to care for Zita during this critical time. The only help she could expect during the delivery was from the children’s maid, who was not trained in childbirth. Zita tried to make the best possible life in exile for her young family. She filled her days with household work, cooking, washing, ironing, and patching the few pieces of clothes they had left. When she was not occupied by these duties, she supervised her children, who divided their time between studying and crafts. Quinto’s garden provided foliage for artwork that the children made to pass the hours.

Particularly important for the empress was a makeshift chapel that she built in one of Quinto’s rooms adjoining the main hall for the family to pray in each day. For help constructing it, Zita appealed to the Funchal authorities, who “fervent Catholics themselves, could not refuse so pious a wish.”
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The government supplied the Quinto chapel with a small altar and an image of the Sacred Heart. Father Zsamboki, the priest who came with the Habsburgs into exile, conducted the daily Catholic services. In the midst of such dire circumstances, Zita’s faith never wavered. “Even if we have failed in everything,” she said, “we have to thank God, for His ways are not our ways.”
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A Portuguese maid who volunteered to serve the family was moved to tears by their plight. “I just cannot bear that these two innocent people should be left so long in this completely inadequate house,” she wrote. “Someone ought to lodge a protest!… Sometimes we do get very low and depressed, but when we see how patiently Their Majesties accept all these ills, we carry on again courageously.”
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Outwardly, Charles tried to wear a brave face during his exile, but the people around him could see that he was but a shell of his former self. In March 1922, accompanied by Otto and Adelhaid, he made the long pilgrimage down into Funchal. For weeks, he and Zita had saved every penny to buy some toys for their son Carl Ludwig, who was about to turn four. Someone ran after the emperor to offer him a warm overcoat, but he declined to take it. Though it was sunny that day, the air was cold and damp. Charles, who had always been plagued by a weak constitution, soon fell ill with bronchitis and a fever of 104 degrees. For the next two weeks, his condition worsened. On March 25, pneumonia set in. Out of desperation, he was injected with turpentine to draw the infection away from his lungs. By the end of the month, his body was covered in sores, blisters, and lesions from countless unsuccessful treatments. A priest was brought in to lead the family in a special Mass of intercession, to take the emperor’s confession, and to offer him Holy Communion.

Charles refused to allow his children into his sickroom at first. This was a long-standing rule upon which he insisted in order to prevent contagion. This became moot when Felix and Carl Ludwig came down with pneumonia anyway; Robert was suffering a postoperative gastric infection; and the household staff members were beginning to contract influenza. Late on the night of March 27, after the emperor partook of the Holy Sacraments, he summoned Otto to his bedside for some time alone between father and son. The next day, Charles said: “The poor boy. I would gladly have spared him that yesterday. But I had to call him to show him an example. He has to know how one conducts oneself in such situations—as Catholic and as Emperor.”
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When his condition became critical, a crucifix was brought before him. The heavily pregnant Zita, sitting next to the sickbed, held it as her children sat in hushed reverence. “I must suffer like this so my peoples can come together again,” Charles told his wife, his eyes fixed on the cross.
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Charles lingered on for days, slowly suffocating. His face pale, covered in sweat, he repeatedly kept telling his wife how much he loved her. “Oh, why do they not let us go home,” he asked Zita. “I want so much to go home with you.” By March 31, he was drifting in and out of consciousness. Looking around his room, he called each of his children by name. “Protect their bodies and their souls,” he muttered to his wife. At 12:23 p.m. on April 1, he was ready to surrender his life. Looking over at Zita, who was still sitting next to him with the crucifix in her hands, he managed to mutter, “I can’t go on much longer … Thy will be done … Yes … Yes … As you will it … Jesus!”
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A few moments later, Charles I of Austria died in his wife’s arms. He was only thirty-four years old. Zita, his eight-month-pregnant widow, was thirty. A few minutes after the emperor died, his devastated family and their small staff assembled in a nearby room. Dropping to their knees, they hailed ten-year-old Otto as “His Majesty.” Otto later recalled how odd that moment was: “I thought this was somehow wrong. His Majesty had always been my father. That was surely still my father.”
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Had the Habsburgs not been dethroned, Otto would have taken on the mantle of emperor, with Zita acting as regent. Otto was now hailed as the rightful heir to the Austrian throne, though he did not assume the title of emperor, and he did not begin exercising his authority as head of the House of Habsburg. That would remain Zita’s domain until he came of age.

Five days later, the emperor’s body was taken in a simple, two-wheeled handcart to the church of Nossa Senhora do Monte for a funeral service. Several thousand people lined the route the pitiful funeral procession took. A deep silence prevailed as a sign of respect for the imperial family. Empress Zita had hoped to obtain permission to bury her husband in the Habsburg crypt in Vienna, but the Austrian government refused. She instead had the body buried in the cemetery at Nossa Senhora. One of the bouquets placed at the grave had written on a small band tied around it, “
TO THE MARTYR KING
.”
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An Austrian woman who witnessed the funeral was deeply impressed with how Zita carried herself.

This woman is really to be admired. She did not for one second lose her composure, nor did the children. I saw no tears from any of them. They only looked very pale and sad. When she came out of the church, she greeted the people on all sides and then spoke to those who had helped with the funeral. They were all under her charm … But what will now become of this poor family?
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