The Legend of Empress Elisabeth

In a moving series of articles, Elena Maria Vidal reviews a trilogy of films, starring Romy Schneider, and offering a rather idealized, but, nevertheless, touching portrayal of the marriage of Franz Joseph of Austria and his beautiful, tragic empress, Elisabeth of Bavaria. As discussed here before, the legendary Elisabeth was the paternal aunt, godmother and namesake of the third Queen of the Belgians; she was also the sister-in-law of Princess Charlotte and the mother-in-law of Princess Stéphanie of Belgium. 

~Sissi (1955)
~Sissi: The Young Empress (1956)
 ~Sissi: Fateful Years of an Empress (1957)

Sorrow at Laeken

Here is a sad, but impressive description of Leopold III and his mother, from a surprising source: the diaries of the Russian revolutionary and prolific writer, Victor Serge, who spent part of his life in Belgium. (Apparently, he had just dined with the king's doctor, who had shared some details of the state of mind of Leopold and Elisabeth). With a few brief strokes of the brush, Serge paints a vivid portrait of the widowed king and the widowed queen mother, capturing both their misery and their nobility quite brilliantly:

Très pieux, pénétré du sens du devoir. Scrupuleux... Le serment constitutionnel le pèse- mais il le respectera. Accablé du sentiment d'avoir été la cause involontaire de la mort de sa femme, la reine Astrid. A refusé de se remarier. S'inflige la solitude comme une expiation. Travailleur, mène une vie triste. Rentre le soir à Laeken, voit les enfants, se met à table en tête-à-tête avec la reine-mère Élisabeth, qui est frêle, blême, encore belle. "Une Wittelsbach", un visage transparent aux yeux bleus, vivant dans un délire presque silencieux. À table, elle semble attendre; il lui arrive de demander pourquoi le roi- Albert Ier- ne vient pas. On lui répond: "Mais il ne peut pas venir...!!" Elle reprend: "Ach, c'est vrai, j'avais oublié..." Elle se lève parfois la nuit pour jouer du violon...

Very pious, penetrated with the sense of duty. Scrupulous...The constitutional oath weighs heavily on him-but he will respect it. Overwhelmed by the sentiment of having been the involuntary cause of the death of his wife, Queen Astrid. Has refused to remarry. Inflicts solitude upon himself as a penance. A hard worker, leads a sad life. Returns to Laeken in the evening, sees the children, sits down to table alone with the Queen Mother, Elisabeth, who is frail, wan, still beautiful. "A Wittelsbach", a transparent face with blue eyes, living in an almost silent delirium. At table, she seems to be waiting; sometimes she asks why the king-Albert I- does not come. They tell her: "But he cannot come...!!" She replies: "Ach, it's true, I'd forgotten..." Sometimes she rises in the night to play the violin... (Victor Serge, Carnets, February 1, 1937)

A Family in Belgium

A beautiful character sketch of King Albert I, Queen Elisabeth, and their children during the First World War, by Mrs. Arthur Gleason, an American lady who helped to direct a field hospital at the front. For her bravery under fire, she was decorated by King Albert with the Order of Leopold.

The finest thing about this royal group is that it is a real family. They are not friendly for reasons of state only; they care for one another. They are simple people, with the affection and the strength of simple natures.

In the eyes of the mother there are tears close to the surface. Her own children are still safe, but the peasant children- she knows of their suffering. We have seen her talk with each little tot of a group of fifty, and send him off with a mother's pat and a sweet tucked in his wee hands. Her interests are without end. She visits a maternity hospital; she helps to arrange a creche, named after her daughter Marie José, for the tiniest of her people; she is a frequent caller in the hospital wards, and always with that gift of caring for each individual person, pausing at each cot to hearten those broken ones. From a sobbing, wounded peasant she listens to a story. His wife is being carried to her rest without a coffin because he is unable to make it. That coffin is furnished, and the grief of one peasant is lessened. A certain fever patient needs fresh milk. A liter a day reaches him. This gracious lady dislikes publicity; she does all things quietly and without pomp. Sometimes for a few minutes we sat upon a low stone wall listening to the music of a band playing in her garden. When she was walking there with a friend, she would nod and smile across the way to those passing. One day she came unannounced and on foot to my friend's villa. Could one help loving this king and queen and their three children?

The eldest, Leopold, is tall and fair and sensitive, like his father, and one feels that, like his father, he also would wish for his own life. He joined The Twelfth and went into the trenches with the men. We have seen him on the march and we have seen him on horseback. Once he came running with the crowd to examine one of the aeroplanes that used to float down easily upon the beach.

His father goes about as simply as other soldiers, walking with a companion to visit the hospital and to pin a decoration on a shattered boy before he dies. At the end of the hospital hall lay a boy facing the sea. He smiled as we entered. He was not well enough to smile much, but was he not a boy, and did n't he have a secret hidden under his pillow? The blue ribbon on his shirt glistened to be noticed. True, it was on the chest of only part of a boy,—half of his limbs had been blown away,—but the ribbon was new and the lad so proud.

"May I show it to Madame, Emile?" The quick hand of the nurse reached to the very spot under the pillow; it had found the place before. Emile needed to see the silver star and wreath pendant and to touch it more often than he needed fresh dressings. The tall gentleman had pinned it on the day before. He and the boy had enjoyed a talk together, all about how it had happened.

The figure of the tall gentleman is unmistakable. He is straight and fair, with fine blue eyes that look directly at one while he is speaking. His voice is low. He is so shy that the color comes and goes swiftly in his face. On a misty spring day sixty men in three lines stood facing the sea in front of a plain brick villa. The officers were dressy, the men groomed beyond recognition, with rifles shining and the Yser mud scraped from their uniforms and boots. They waited the coming of the shy gentleman. Soon he came, in dark uniform, gloves, and cap with several bands of gold braid adding inches to it. I watched him pin on each man a decoration, some blue, some garnet, and noticed with what concern and gentleness he talked with each man, asking questions, listening courteously. He is to his people what he is to his children, a father who cares that they suffer. There on the lonely beach of the last strip of his land he paid tribute to his soldiers individually, as man to man.

The president of France, with his minister of war and a large group of officers, made an inspection of the front and a visit to our hospital one day. In their look around, the doctors and the president, busily talking, had a way of hastening on ahead, going through doorways first, but the tall, shy gentleman followed, always alone. He is the most lonely figure in all that country. Only a simple nature can be so careless of his own dignity. And not only by that prominence is he a leader; he is a soldier-comrade with his people, and always a man.

Salvador Moncada

Here are some excerpts from scientific talks by the distinguished Honduran-British pharmacologist, Sir Salvador Enrique Moncada, husband of Princess Marie-Esméralda of Belgium, and father of her two children, Alexandra Léopoldine (12) and Leopoldo Daniel (9). The family is pictured above.

The Trousseau of the May Queen

Here is an article about a lavish display of the dresses of Queen Marie-José of Italy, the daughter of King Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium.  The exhibition was held in November-December 2009 at the Mona Bismarck Foundation Paris Cultural Center.

Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the Queen's death, on January 27, 2001. May she rest in peace.

Madonna della Sedia

This is an oil painting, from the estate of Princess Lilian of Belgium, which originally belonged to the mother of King Albert I, Princess Marie-Louise, Countess of Flanders. Apparently, it is a copy of Raphael's Madonna della Sedia, depicting Our Lady embracing the baby Jesus, as a young John the Baptist watches devoutly.

Le Petit Hameau de la Reine

Here is an interesting article from a few years ago. Historical novelist Elena Maria Vidal, who has been a kind friend to this blog, discusses the model village and farm commissioned by Queen Marie-Antoinette on the grounds of Versailles. As Miss Vidal explains, the "little hamlet", despite its practical, educational and even charitable purposes, is often unfairly portrayed as an example of heedless extravagance on the part of the Queen. It seems that Marie-Antoinette is the prime example of a royal lady, endowed with many winsome qualities, who nevertheless could never put a foot right, in the estimation of some. It reminds me of our Princess Lilian, whose every gesture, even the most positive, was tirelessly, ingeniously criticized. (A left-wing newspaper even sneered at her Cardiological Foundation). Incidentally, Lilian and Marie-Antoinette were related, by marriage, since the princess' husband, King Leopold III of the Belgians, was a direct descendant of the French queen's favorite, older sister, Maria Carolina. Through the royal houses of France and Saxony, Leopold III was also related to Louis XVI.

The Voice of Leopold III

Le Vétéran, porte-parole de la Ligue Royale Léopold III, is an interesting and informative blog published from time to time in Flemish and French. On the right column of the page, by clicking on the little image of the king speaking on the radio, you can hear part of an address, delivered by Leopold III to the Belgian people on the occasion of the German invasion of May 10, 1940. In Flemish, he tells his subjects: "War has erupted near us. An era of economic and human trials announces itself for Belgium. Many homes will now know the emotion of separation: parents, wives, children, know that you are in my thoughts." The king had a soft, gentle yet powerful voice; he was also the first Belgian monarch to speak Flemish more or less fluently.

Princess Lilian- Loved and Loving

With all the talk of the unpopularity of the second wife of King Leopold III, it is forgotten that the Princesse de Réthy, along with the power of inspiring great hatred, also had the power to inspire great love. Her passionate romance with her sovereign is routinely reduced to a mixture of lust and ambition; this is to seriously underestimate the depth of the relationship of these two complex and misunderstood human beings. Their parallel scientific, cultural and humanitarian pursuits, over decades, indicate a union of mind and heart, fed not by base passions, but by noble aspirations. Even brief glimpses of Leopold's letters to Lilian suggest a profound, spiritual love, beyond mere physical attraction, resting upon common religious, political and moral ideals. For instance, after being forced to delegate his royal powers to his son, Prince Baudouin, in 1950, prior to his formal abdication a year later, Leopold wrote to his wife, still in exile in Switzerland. He regretted her sadness at recent events, but encouraged her with the thought of God's goodness in protecting the royal family from many perils, and of Baudouin's nobility in assuming his high charge on behalf of the monarchy and the country. On an expedition in South America, in 1952, the king sent another affectionate note to the princess, evoking, in touching terms, their shared love of their family.

As for Lilian, she is often portrayed as a cold, calculating social-climber, who married the king merely for rank and wealth. To harbor some mistrust of the motives of a commoner, marrying into royalty at a time of peace and prosperity, might be understandable. To brand, as an unscrupulous adventuress, a commoner wedding a king at a time of war and adversity, is less understandable. In 1941, the year of Lilian's marriage, Belgium was occupied by Hitler, Leopold was a prisoner of war, and the future was completely uncertain. Isn't it a bit ridiculous to assume that Lilian accepted Leopold's proposal, let alone manipulated him into this proposal, out of lust for the throne of Belgium, when nobody even knew whether there would be a throne, or a Belgium, in the years to come? Furthermore, Leopold's conflict with his ministers and allies in 1940 did not bode well for the future, even if Germany were defeated and Belgium liberated. As it turned out, Lilian agreed to marry the king only on condition of renouncing the title and rank of queen, and rather than gold-digging, she was more likely to be digging her own grave. After four years of comparatively good treatment, the royal family was deported to the grim, insalubrious fortress of Hirchstein at the time of the Allied landings in Normandy in June, 1944. Later, they were transferred to Strobl in Austria, where they were liberated by American soldiers in May, 1945. Let it not be forgotten: for eleven months, Lilian, with her husband, her little son, and her three step-children, was held hostage by the enemy. The prisoners' diet was insufficient; the children were often ill. Cut off from the outside world, ignorant of the future, the royal family and their small entourage lived with the constant fear that they might be murdered by their jailers in a fit of desperation and vindictiveness. In fact, an S.S. officer did try to poison the family at one point with cyanide pills. During this dark period, Lilian assisted her husband in protecting and educating the royal children and sustaining their morale. In the decades to come, in the face of enormous bad press, Lilian would loyally support her husband through all the vicissitudes of his life. After his death, the normally indomitable lady fell into a deep depression, but rallied, with her characteristic courage. For the rest of her life, she would stubbornly defend Leopold's memory. This record looks like love to me.

Leopold was not the only person to love Lilian, or whom Lilian loved. She is often depicted as a harsh, domineering, unloving and unloved mother. To be sure, she was a woman with flaws, prone to be imperious, demanding and excessively severe at times. Yet, even if relations with her step-children cooled later, she won the devotion of Princess Joséphine-Charlotte, Prince Baudouin and Prince Albert over many years. Guests of the royal family after the war, such as the younger Lord Roger Keyes, were struck by the mutual affection and tenderness of its members. It is often claimed that Lilian's own children found her unbearable. If she became tragically estranged from her eldest daughter, Princess Marie-Christine, her younger daughter, Princess Marie-Esméralda, has staunchly defended her memory, in memoirs and interviews. As for her son, Prince Alexandre-Emmanuel, he supposedly kept his marriage to Léa Wolman, a twice-divorced mother of two, a secret for seven years, for fear of his mother's wrath. It is assumed that Lilian would have disapproved of the marriage simply because Léa was not royal, an arrogance all the more insufferable since Lilian was born a commoner herself. Yet, when Marie-Esméralda married Honduran pharmacologist Salvador Moncada, also a commoner, she felt no need to keep this step a secret. Might Lilian have had reservations about her son's choice of bride for other reasons? For instance, might the lady's prior, unfortunate marital history have worried her? If so, with all due respect to Princess Léa, Lilian's concern might have been understandable, especially for a believing, practicing, Catholic woman from an older generation for whom marriage was for life. In any case, Alexandre-Emmanuel frequently visited his mother at Argenteuil. After her death, he assisted Marie-Esméralda in attempting, in vain, to fulfill their mother's last wishes by preserving Argenteuil as a memorial to Leopold III. The prince surely loved his mother, in spite of any tensions. People ought to be cautious, too, about accepting Marie-Christine's accounts of maternal cruelty and neglect unreservedly; she has herself admitted, in her memoirs, that she has not always been a truthful person.

As for her other relatives, if Lilian clashed with some of her in-laws, such as Prince Charles, the Regent of Belgium from 1944-1950, and Queen Fabiola, the consort of Baudouin I, why assume that this was all Lilian's fault? Human relations are usually more complex. (In any case, the story, endlessly repeated, that Leopold and Lilian plundered all the furnishings of Laeken and installed them at Argenteuil, during the honeymoon of Baudouin and Fabiola, is FALSE. Even Marie-Christine has denied it.) Furthermore, other in-laws seem to have liked Lilian. Queen Elisabeth, the mother of Leopold III, invited the young Mlle. Baels to Laeken during the war and encouraged her romance and religious marriage with the king, apparently welcoming her with open arms and lending her the bridal veil Elisabeth had worn at her own wedding. Queen Marie-José of Italy, Leopold's sister, according to her closest biographer, Luciano Regolo, found Lilian sympathetic. Marie-José's daughter, Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, by her own testimony, greatly enjoyed the company of her Uncle Leopold and Aunt Lilian, traveling with them to India. After the king's death, Maria Gabriella joined the Assemblée Princesse Lilian en hommage au Roi Léopold III, an association established by the widowed princess to perpetuate her husband's memory.

Outside the royal family, Lilian was admired by many. To name a few distinguished, thoughtful figures: collaborators of the princess in her Cardiological Foundation, renowned scientists and doctors, such as Christian de Duve and Charles van Ypersele de Strihou, have left touching testimonies of their appreciation for their patroness. After her death in 2002, the 95-year-old, legendary surgeon, Michael DeBakey, despite his age, insisted on attending the commemorative conference in Lilian's honor to render her a resounding tribute. In other fields, men such as Raymond Bousquet, a French ambassador to Belgium, Herman de Croo, President of the Chamber, Monsignor Edouard Massaux, rector of the Catholic University of Louvain, Michel Verwilghen, professor of law at Louvain and at the Academy of International Law at the Hague, Jean Piat, French comedian, Marcel Jullian, French director, author, and hero of the Resistance, and even Lilian's old opponent, Pierre Mertens, a novelist whom she sued over his portrayal of her family in Une paix royale, have praised her character. The princess' housekeeper, Jeannine Degrève, remained in her service for 53 years. She must have liked her mistress well enough! Finally, Lilian may have been the most hated woman in Belgian history, but even among the public at large, she had her supporters. Reactions to her marriage were not uniformly hostile; the palace received plenty of flowers and congratulations too. In her later years, at Argenteuil, she and her husband continued to receive many messages of sympathy from ordinary people, on the occasion, for instance, of their Silver Wedding. Towards the end of Lilian's life, after the loss of her husband, a sensationalist historian, Karel de Clerck, claimed that she had slept with her step-son, King Baudouin, during his youth! Another historian, the eminent author Jean Vanwelkenhuyzen, soon gave the lie to these charges and the princess received another series of sympathetic letters. In discretion, her gestures of charity were many: spontaneously kissing a leprous woman on a visit to Molokai in the footsteps of Father Damien, paying for the surgical operation of the daughter of one of her gendarmes, trying her best to reconcile an estranged couple among her entourage, and helping the father and grandfather of a pedophile victim to obtain justice, among others. In return, in discretion, she was loved.

Gossip

January 23 will mark the anniversary of the death of Prince Baudouin of Belgium (1869-1891), the much-regretted elder brother of King Albert I. In Albert of Belgium: defender of right (1935), Emile Cammaerts describes the king's efforts to silence the scandalous rumors surrounding the prince's passing. (The pious, conscientious young man had been portrayed as an inveterate philanderer who had fallen victim to a crime of passion or a suicide).

Talking to M. de Paeuw in July 1930, King Albert mentioned certain rumors which had been spread on the morrow of Prince Baudouin's sudden death, and asked him to seize the first opportunity of contradicting these statements."You must," he said, "help us to stop the calumnies which were circulated and which are still circulated regarding my brother's premature death. You see, M. le Directeur- Général, the higher we are placed the more exposed we are to mischievous gossip. Kings and Princes are even less free of it than others. Everything we do is looked at through magnifying glasses. The public cannot believe that we can live simply and that a Prince can die of a common illness like everyone else. Imaginations are stirred, tongues begin to wag, and invention is added to invention."

In order to comply with the late King's wishes, M. de Paeuw reproduced in his book, Albert, Troisième Roi des Belges, the series of letters, written in January 1891 by the Count of Flanders to Leopold II, showing conclusively that Prince Baudouin died of pneumonia, following a cold contracted in the course of his military duties (Appendix VI).

Ironically, however, similar lurid nonsense would be spread about King Albert's own premature death, on February 17, 1934.

More on Prince Baudouin
More on the family of the Count and Countess of Flanders