Splendid Photos Katenka............many thanks.
A great little book I was reading last night, "Recollections of a Royal Governess" published in 1916, confirmed some previous posts in this thread and in part #1 and knocked others. The author impressed me as a straight shooter and was appointed as governess to little Erzi in 1889 soon after the events at Mayerling and stayed in that position until Erzi married.
The 1st topic that was quite interesting and something I had wondered about when reading "He did not Die at Mayerling" was what did Rudolf's daughter say about it since no one could expect a young child to go along with any fabrication imposed by the highly censored Austrian court? When she first saw her father on his funeral bed, Erzi insisted it was not her daddy, and she continued to insist he did not die at Meyerling at least up until the time she married. Imagine that! Of course the governess said everyone tried to tell little Erzi that was ridiculous but she would not listen. Who knows? Maybe it was the hysterical denial of a distressed child, or maybe not? The governess was generally postive about Stephanie, but did say she seemed totally indifferent to the death of her husband.
Then she discussed something I found highly entertaining -- about "The Martyrdom of an Empress" discussed in Part 1 of this thread. That book was first published anonymously in 1899, and then by Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen in later editions and she was a newspaper reporter in New York. I always thought the book contained far too much personal detail of someone too close to and extremely devoted to the Empress to be written by any newspaper reporter who had never even met the Empress. The royal governess said this book was written by none other than Ida Ferenczy, appointed as a reader to the Empress in 1864 and who gained more intimacy and influence over the Empress than anyone else (according to Joan Haslip in The Lonely Empress)! Because of this, many thought adverse influence, the Austrian Court hated Ida Ferenczy and as soon as the Empress died, Ferenczy was kicked out of the palace, so she wrote this book as revenge. I do remember this book said that there was no way Rudolph could have killed Mary Vetsera because "he loved her more than life itself". So I'll have to amend my previous conclusion that Rudolph really didn't love Mary Vetsera all that much since this is the best evidence I have seen yet on that subject. However, I still maintain that for some mysterious reason, Rudolph was still desperate to end their relationship.
The other topic I found quite sad but had already suspected was there were many people, including Stephanie's own sister Princess Louise of Coburg, who were absolutely determined to blow up the marriage between Rudolph and Stephanie. Every betrayal of the marriage by Rudolph, real or fabricated, was communicated to Stephanie, who chose not to believe her husband's repeated denials.
Finally though I haven't finished the book yet, she did mention some aspects of what happened at Mayerling that I have long suspected but have heretofore never seen in print anywhere else. Freaky stuff.
The Royal Governess
