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  The following morning the pair did not remain alone for long. Even at breakfast they were interrupted by Archduchess Sophie, who brought along Duchess Ludovika. Sophie wrote in her diary, “We found the young couple at breakfast in the pretty writing room, my son beaming and all over the picture of sweet happiness (praise be to God!), Sisi emotional as she embraced her mother. At first we intended leaving them again, but the Emperor held us back with a touching eagerness.”

  Whether this last statement can be taken at face value is open to doubt. The two mothers—people commanding respect from the young, overly courteous Emperor—had interrupted the couple’s first breakfast, had inquisitively scrutinized their expressions, and then suddenly and politely announced that they were leaving. What choice did the Emperor have but to request them to stay? A fairly obvious situation to anyone familiar with Viennese customs. Sophie’s diary continues with the revealing sentence, “Thereafter a confidential talk between each child and its mother.” This clearly means that Sophie subjected her son to a detailed inquisition even while he was still at breakfast. In the course of it she would learn that the performance of marital duties had not yet been accomplished—a fact known all over the court before the day was out. Footmen and chambermaids were reliable informants.

  Even the imperial bedchamber enjoyed little privacy. Everyone knew on which night (the third) Sisi became a woman. The following morning, the young Empress was bidden to appear at a family breakfast in her mother-in-law’s apartments, although in her shame and embarrassment, she was reluctant to go. According to Sophie’s diary, that morning the Emperor climbed the stairs to his parents’ apartments alone and “waited for his dear Sisi to arise.”18 He did not understand his young wife’s wish that they remain alone rather than presenting themselves to the assembled family, who had been watching every movement of the bridal couple for days.

  Much later, Elisabeth explained this embarrassing situation to her then lady-in-waiting, Countess Marie Festetics. “The Emperor was so used to obeying her that he gave in to this demand as well. But it was horrible for me. I went only for his sake.”19 In later years Elisabeth repeatedly referred to this particular morning.

  During the day, it was her duty to receive deputations from Lower and Upper Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Bukovina, standing between her husband and her mother-in-law. Even Sophie found these audiences so tiring that she “simply couldn’t” and needed fortifying in between. All meals were official events, preceded by a change of clothes.

  At the audience for the Hungarian deputation, Sisi wore Hungarian national costume for the first time—a pink dress with a black velvet bodice and magnificent lace trimmings. It was, oddly enough, a gift from her mother-in-law. Archduchess Sophie, whose feelings for Hungary were anything but benevolent, admired her daughter-in-law’s beauty particularly in this dress. “She and the Emperor in his hussar’s uniform made such a handsome and gracious couple,” she confided to her diary.

  On the evening of April 27 a large court ball took place. The young wife had to withstand the inquisitive looks of the “socially acceptable” aristocracy. The news of the current status of the imperial marriage had already made the rounds. “Her Majesty,” this time dressed all in white, her new diamond belt around her waist, a tiara and a wreath of white roses in her hair, sat with “His Majesty” under a canopy of red velvet and listened to “Master Strauss” letting “his tunes ring out.” Both Their Majesties danced several times—not with each other, of course, but with the personages designated by protocol. Archduchess Sophie did not forget to note in her diary that the Emperor had to “prompt” his young wife in the figures of the dance.20 Sisi’s dancing skills could not yet measure up to the standards of the Viennese court. At the high point of the ball, the cotillion, Strauss’s “Elisabethklänge” was heard for the first time. As tribute to the bride and groom, both the imperial anthem and the Bavarian anthem were woven into the composition.

  Duchess Ludovika remained remarkably objective, unaffected by so much glitter, in her report to Bavaria. “Yesterday’s court ball was very nice, enormously crowded, brilliant, but the rooms are too small for here, there was such pushing and shoving that one was almost crushed. Many beautiful women and much jewelry make all the festivities glitter.” Ludovika saw very clearly that this magnificence meant only work for her daughter. “I see little of Sisi, she is much in demand, and I very much fear to embarrass the Emperor, a young married couple should be left alone.”21 But there was to be no minute of the day that the young couple was left in peace.

  The Emperor, dutiful as always, was disciplined enough to see to his paperwork and give audiences in between festivities. The Austrian ambassador in Paris, Count Alexander Hübner, for example, that same day spent more than an hour with the Emperor discussing the Eastern question. He found him “physically and mentally matured” and wrote in his diary, “How cheerful, happy, and so very openly in love he looked! It was a joy to watch him. May God preserve him!”22 Archduchess Sophie expressed quite similar sentiments in her diary. She repeatedly emphasized how much in love and how happy her Franzi was.

  What the court ball was to society, the celebration in the Prater the following day was to the people. The open state carriages bearing the imperial and ducal families drove through the hurly-burly of the park, along the principal avenue, decorated with Japanese lanterns, and through the Wurstelprater to the Feuerwerksplatz, where the Circus Renz was giving a gala performance. This time the Empress’s pleasure was visible to all. She enjoyed the acrobats’ tricks, especially those of the horseback riders in medieval costumes, and the famous handsome horses of the Renz family. Elisabeth’s love for the Circus Renz, which was kindled that night, remained with her to the end of her life.

  Four days after the wedding, Elisabeth was so exhausted by all the gala activities that for her sake the Emperor canceled all the planned receptions, taking her instead to the Prater in the afternoon, driving the phaeton himself.

  But Elisabeth drew the greatest comfort from her brothers and sisters, who spent a few more days in Vienna before returning to Bavaria. She especially liked being with her older sister Helene, with whom Sisi could talk freely. Ludovika wrote to Marie of Saxony, “As long as the sisters [Sisi and Helene] were together, they were inseparable, and always spoke English, but took no part in our conversations, which was not at all nice of them … although it got them into trouble … more than once.”23

  The two girls used English as something like a secret language. At the Viennese court, English was not customarily spoken. Neither the Emperor nor Archduchess Sophie knew the language. The annoyance at the sisters’ mysterious conversations was therefore entirely understandable. But anyone could also see how steadfast was the love between them—even after the engagement in Bad Ischl, such an unhappy episode in Helene’s life.

  The festival week concluded with a municipal ball in the Winterreit-schule (Winter Riding School) and the Redoutensäle (Masked-Ball Halls), which were connected specifically for this occasion by breaking through the walls. Once again Johann Strauss provided the music. Once again Sisi felt herself the target of thousands of eyes. As the new Empress, after all, she was supposed to be seen by as many people as possible as soon as possible.

  Ceremonial controlled even the honeymoon, which, once the festivities were concluded, the couple spent in Laxenburg Castle outside Vienna. Since punctually every morning the Emperor drove to his desk in the Hofburg in Vienna, the young woman was left alone all day long in Laxenburg—that is, isolated within a large circle of people ready to educate and serve her. Archduchess Sophie joined her daughter-in-law every day “to keep her company.”

  Sisi’s sisters, including Helene, returned to Bavaria. Sisi was homesick and wrote sad poems during her Laxenburg honeymoon. One she entitled “Sehnsucht” (Longing).

  Es kehrt der junge Frühling wieder

  Und schmückt den Baum mit frischem Grün

  Und lehrt den Vöge
ln neue Lieder

  Und macht die Blumen schöner blüh’n.

  Dock was ist mir die Frühlingswonne

  Hier in dem fernen, fremden Land?

  Ich sehn’ mich nach der Heimat Sonne,

  Ich sehn’ mich nach der Isar Strand.24

  [Fresh spring returns / And trims the trees with new green / And teaches new songs to the birds / And makes the flowers bloom more beautifully. / / But what is springtime bliss to me / Here in the faraway, strange land? / I long for the sun of home, / I long for the banks of the Isar.]

  The theme that recurred from then on was that of the caged bird or the butterfly far from home, finding only unhappiness and the absence of freedom. This despairing cry for freedom is threaded through all of the young Empress’s verses. Two weeks after the wedding, on May 8, 1854, she wrote:

  Oh, dass ich nie den Pfad verlassen,

  Der mich zur Freiheit hätt’ geführt.

  Oh, dass ich auf der breiten Strassen

  Der Eitelkeit mich nie verirrt!

  Ich bin erwacht in einem Kerker,

  Und Fesseln sind an meiner Hand.

  Und meine Sehnsucht immer stärker—

  Und Freiheit! Du, mir abgewandt!

  Ich bin erwacht aus einem Rausche,

  Der meinen Geist gefangenhielt,

  Und fluche fruchtlos diesem Tausche,

  Bei dem ich Freiheit! Dich—verspielt.25

  [Oh, had I but never left the path / That would have led me to freedom. / Oh, that on the broad avenues / Of vanity I had never strayed! / / I have awakened in a dungeon, / With chains on my hands. / And my longing ever stronger— / And freedom! You, turned from me! / / I have awakened from a rapture, / Which held my spirit captive, / And vainly do I curse this exchange, / In which I gambled away you—freedom!—away.]

  But the young Empress shed tears, not only over her home and her freedom, but also over her first love. That she did so even during the honeymoon weeks with Franz Joseph indicates that there were additional problems, about which we can only speculate.

  Reluctantly and sadly, Sisi began to obey the rules of the court, even if she never acknowledged the propriety of such rigid etiquette. Later, she told her lady-in-waiting “how afraid she had been in the world of strangers, of exalted personages—how everything had seemed so different!—how she missed her home and her sisters and brothers!—the whole carefree, innocent existence of Possenhofen!—The natural, the simple was to disappear under the unnatural pressure of exaggerated etiquette—in a word—how everything dealt only with ‘seeming’ and not with ‘being’—and how difficult everything had often been.”26

  In Vienna, Sisi’s health became very precarious. For months she suffered from severe coughing fits and from anxiety attacks whenever she had to go down steep stairs.27 It is quite probable that her constant ailments had psychological origins.

  A mere two weeks after the wedding, Sisi’s longing for her sisters and brothers was so great that she requested the Emperor almost beseechingly to invite her favorite brother, Karl Theodor, to spend a few days in Vienna. When the Emperor agreed, she wept for joy.

  She felt trapped in a gilded cage. The jewelry, the beautiful dresses—they were merely a burden to her. For they meant fittings, making choices, constant dressing and changing. There were battles over little things. Elisabeth refused to give away her shoes after wearing them once. The chambermaids sneered: The new Empress was unfamiliar with the simplest time-honored customs practiced at the court of Vienna. She did not like to have the waiting women dress her. She had been raised to be independent, and she was very shy; the lady’s maids were still strangers to her. On this point, too, she was unable to get her way.

  Conflicts with the secret Empress, Archduchess Sophie, usually turned, in Sisi’s opinion, on trivialities, and they hurt her all the more for being so trivial. Thus, the young couple liked to wander alone through the halls and twisting corridors of the Hofburg to the old Burgtheater, which was part of the castle. This innocent pleasure, however, was immediately forbidden by Archduchess Sophie. For the Emperor and Empress were entitled to be escorted to the theater by carefully specified court officials.28 Sophie was always concerned with upholding imperial dignity. The fact that in this matter the Emperor did not dare to object additionally offended the already high-strung Sisi.

  Sophie was accustomed to making all the decisions in family and political matters. And she was accustomed to commanding obedience. Her husband depended on her mind. From their earliest childhood on, her four sons—Franz Joseph, Ferdinand Maximilian, Karl Ludwig, and Ludwig Viktor—acknowledged Sophie’s authority as supreme and never dared to resist her. It was Sophie to whom Franz Joseph owed his position. She had persuaded her husband, the rightful heir to the throne, to renounce it. She had made her son what he was—a fully trained, dutiful, and extremely industrious young man of personal integrity, who espoused her political principles: the divine right of kings, absolute rule by the monarch, suppression of any manifestations of the popular will, rejection of parliamentarianism, close ties between church and state. Now she felt it to be her duty to turn her sixteen-year-old niece into an empress who would fulfill her conception in the service of the empire and the dynasty.

  In later years, Elisabeth understood that Sophie was not motivated by malice, and she declared to a lady-in-waiting, “that the Archduchess surely meant so well in everything—but that the paths were arduous and the manner harsh—that the Emperor suffered from it as well and that she always wanted to control … and how from the first day she was an obstacle to her contentment and happiness and interfered in everything and how she made it harder for them to be—undisturbed—together!”29

  All her life, Archduchess Sophie had longed for a position such as her sixteen-year-old niece now assumed. She could not help being offended, even outraged, at the way in which the young Empress looked on her high standing as only a burden and something that robbed her of her personal liberty. Sophie paid no attention whatever to Sisi’s very obvious depressions; she did not even take them seriously. She saw only the expression, radiant with joy, of her enamored “Franzi.”

  Queen Marie of Saxony confirmed this attitude. “The news from Vienna sounds indescribably happy and makes me happy…. Both happy mothers have written me veritable books about it.”30 Sophie also wrote to Bavaria about “our dear young couple,” who, in the “rural seclusion” of Laxenburg “spent the happiest honeymoon. The truly Christian domestic happiness of my children is a heartwarming sight.”31

  Nevertheless, there is no trace of domestic happiness in the Empress’s statements made in later years. Whenever she visited Laxenburg, Sisi never forgot to refer to her sad honeymoon. For example, Marie Valerie, her younger daughter, noted in her diary, “Mama showed us the desk at which she wrote so much to Possi [Possenhofen] and cried so much, so much, because she was homesick.”32

  Similarly, Marie Festetics wrote in her diary in Laxenburg,

  Elisabeth went from room to room—said of each what it was—but without more detailed commentary, until finally she stopped in a corner room where a desk stood between windows and a desk chair before it; she stood quiet as a mouse for a long time—suddenly she said: “… Here I wept a lot, Marie. The mere thought of that time constricts my heart. I was here after my wedding…. I felt so abandoned, so lonely. Of course the Emperor could not be here during the day, early every morning he went to Vienna. At six o’clock he returned for dinner. Until then I was alone all day long and was afraid of the moment when Archduchess Sophie came. For she came every day, to spy on what I was doing at any hour. I was completely à la merci of this completely malicious woman. Everything I did was bad. She passed disparaging judgments on anyone I loved. She found out everything because she never stopped prying. The whole house feared her so much that everyone trembled. Of course they told her everything. The smallest thing was an affair of state.”33

  Elisabeth’s complaints continued in the same vein. Surely as far as Sophie’s malice we
nt, they were exaggerated. For that the Archduchess meant well, even though she employed the wrong means, is made sufficiently clear by Sophie’s diary. On the other hand, Elisabeth’s stories show very obviously the paramount position Sophie occupied in the imperial family during the 1850s. Archduchess Sophie “scolded” not only the young Empress, “but also the Emperor, like schoolchildren,” the astonished Countess Festetics learned from Elisabeth.

  Once I requested the Emperor to take me along to Vienna. I spent the whole day there with him. For one day I did not see her … but no sooner had we arrived back home in the evening, than she came running over. She forbade me to do anything like that ever again. She reviled me so much because it is unseemly for an Empress to go running after her husband and to drive back and forth like a cadet. Of course, after that it was stopped.

  Even here in Laxenburg, during the so-called honeymoon, the young couple was hardly ever alone for their only shared meal of the day. For example, one of the imperial aides-de-camp, Hugo von Weckbecker, had the job of sitting next to the Empress and was supposed to “endeavor to engage her in conversation, since she was still too timid and was now to be educated in the social graces.”34 Countess Esterházy, acting on Sophie’s orders, also never left Sisi’s side, so as to be able to correct every misstep immediately.

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  The Emperor and Empress took their first trip early in June, traveling to Moravia and Bohemia. It was an act of gratitude and recognition for proffered aid and loyalty. In 1848, the imperial family had fled riot-torn Vienna and gone to Olmütz in Moravia. There, an important event in Austrian history had taken place: Emperor Ferdinand’s renunciation of the throne (“I was glad to do it”) and the accession of Franz Joseph, eighteen years old at the time.