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An essay by Henry W. Nevinson |
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The Penalty Of Virtue |
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Title: The Penalty Of Virtue Author: Henry W. Nevinson [More Titles by Nevinson] His crime was that he actually married the girl. It had always been the fashion for an Austrian Archduke to keep an opera-dancer, whether he liked it or not, just as he always kept a racehorse, even though he cared nothing about racing. For any scion of the Imperial House she was a necessary part of the surroundings, an item in the entourage of Court. He maintained her just as our Royal Family pay subscriptions to charities, or lay the foundation-stone of a church. It was expected of him. _Noblesse oblige_. Descent from the House of Hapsburg involves its duties as well as its rights. The opera-dancer was as essential to Archducal existence as the seventy-seventh quartering on the Hapsburg arms. She was the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual Imperialness. She justified the title of "Transparency." She was the mark of true heredity, like the Hapsburg lip. As the advertisements say, no Archduke should be without one. But really to love an opera-dancer was a scandal for derision, moving all the Courts of the Empire to scorn. Actually to marry her was a crime beyond forgiveness. It shook the Throne. It came very near the sin of treason, for which the penalties prescribed may hardly be whispered in polite ears. To mingle the Imperial blood with a creature born without a title, and to demand human and divine sanction for the deed! It brought a blush to the cheek of heraldry. What of the possible results of a union with a being from the stage? Only if illegitimate, could such results legitimately be recognised; only if ignoble in the eyes of morality, could they be received without censure among the nobility. It was not fair to put all one's Imperial relations, to say nothing of the Court officials, the Lord High Chamberlain, the Keepers of the Pedigree, the Diamond Sticks in Waiting, the Grooms of the Bedchamber, and the Valets Extraordinary--it was not fair to put their poor brains into such a quandary of contradiction and perplexity. And who shall tell the divine wrath of that august figure, obscurely visible in the recesses of ancestral homes, upon whose brow had descended the diadem of Roman Emperors, the crown of Christ's Vicar in things terrestrial, and who, when he was not actually wearing the symbol of Imperial supremacy, enjoyed the absolute right to assume the regalia of eight kingdoms in turn, including the sacred kingdom of Jerusalem, and possessed forty-three other titles to pre-eminent nobility, not counting the etceteras with which each separate string of titles was concluded? Who, without profanity, shall tell his wrath? It was the Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, head of the Tuscan branch of the House of Hapsburg, who confronted in his own person that Imperial wrath, and committed the inexpiable crime of marriage. It is true that he was not entirely to blame. He did not succumb without a struggle, and his efforts to resist the temptation to legality appear to have been sincere. Indeed, as has so often happened since the days of Eve, it was chiefly the woman's fault. He honestly endeavoured to make her his mistress, in accordance with all Archducal precedent, but she persistently, nay, obstinately, refused the honour of Imperial shame. With a rigidity that in other circumstances might, perhaps, have been commended, but, in relation to an Archduke, can only be described as designing, she insisted upon marriage. She was but Fraulein Milli Stubel, light-skirted dancer at the Court Opera-House, but, with unexampled hardihood, she maintained her headlong course along the criminal path of virtue. What could a man do when exposed to temptation so severe? The Archduke was in love, and love is an incalculable force, driving all of us at times irresistibly to deeds of civil and ecclesiastical wedlock. He was a soldier, a good soldier, in itself an unusual and suspicious characteristic in one of the Hapsburg blood. He was a musician and a man of culture--qualities that, in a prince, must be taken as dangerous indications of an unbalanced mind. He was an intimate friend of the Crown Prince Rudolph, that bewildering personality, whose own fate was so unhappy, so obscure. Skill in war, intelligence, knowledge, friendship all marked him out as a man only too likely to bring discredit on Archducal tradition. His peers in birth shook their heads, and muttered the German synonym for "crank." Worse than all, he was in love--in love with a woman of dangerous virtue. What could such a man do against temptation? Struggle as he might, he could not long repel the seductive advances of honourable action. He loved, he fell, he married. In London, of all places, this crime against all the natural dictates of Society was ultimately perpetrated. We do not know what church lent itself to the deed, or what hotel gave shelter to the culprits' shame. By hunting up the marriage register of Johann Orth (to such shifts may an Archduke be reduced in the pursuit of virtue), one might, perhaps, discover the name of the officiating clergyman, and we can confidently assume he will not be found upon the bench of Bishops. But it is all many years ago now, and directly after the marriage, as though in the vain hope of concealing every trace of his offence, Johann Orth purchased a little German ship, which he called by the symbolic name of _Santa Margherita_--for St. Margaret suffered martyrdom for the sin of rejecting a ruler's dishonourable proposals--and so they sailed for South America. By what means the wedded fugitives purposed there to support their guiltless passion, is uncertain. But we know that they arrived, that the captain gave himself out as ill, and left the ship, together with most of the crew, no doubt in apprehension of divine vengeance, if they should seem any longer to participate in the breach of royal etiquette. We further know that, in July 1890, the legal lovers sailed from Buenos Ayres, with a fresh crew, the Archduke himself in command, and were never heard of more. An Austrian cruiser was sent to search the coasts, in vain. No letters came; no ship has ever hailed the vessel of their iniquity. The insurance companies have long paid the claims upon the Archduke's premiums for his life, and that fact alone is almost as desirable an evidence as a death-certificate to his heir. But one Sunday in July 1910, the Imperial Court of Austria also issued an edict to appear simultaneously in the chief official gazettes of the habitable globe, declaring that, unless within six months further particulars were supplied concerning one, namely, the Archduke Johann Salvator, of the House of Austria and Tuscany, otherwise and hereinafter known as Johann Orth, master mariner, and concerning his alleged decease, together with that of one Milli Orth, _nee_ Stubel, his reputed accomplice in matrimony, the property, estates, effects, titles, jewels, family vaults, and other goods of the aforesaid Johann Orth, should forthwith and therewithal pass into the possession of the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, nephew and presumptive heir of the aforesaid Johann Orth, to the estimated value of L150,000 sterling, in excess or defect thereof as the case might be, it being thereafter presumed that the aforesaid Johann Orth, together with the aforesaid Milli Orth, his reputed accomplice in matrimony, did meet or encounter their death upon the high seas by the act or other intervention of God. Oh, never believe it! There is an unsuspected island in untravelled seas. Like the island of Tirnanog, which is the Irish land of eternal youth, it lies below the sunset, brighter than the island-valley of Avilion: To that island have those star-like lovers fared, since they gave the world and all its Imperial Courts the slip. There they have discovered an innocent and lovely race, adorned only with shells and the flowers of hibiscus; and, intermingled with that race, in accordance with indigenous marriage ceremonies, the crew of the _Santa Margherita_ now rear a dusky brood. In her last extant letter, addressed to the leader of the _corps de ballet_ at the Ring Theatre in Vienna, Madame Milli Orth herself hinted at a No-Man's Land, which they were seeking as the home of their future happiness. They have found it now, having trodden the golden path of rays. There palls not wealth, or state, or any rank, nor ever Court snores loudly, but men and women meet each evening to discuss the next day's occupation, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer collects the unearned increment in the form of the shell called Venus' ear. For a time, indeed, Johann Orth attempted to maintain a kind of kingship, on the strength of his superior pedigree. But when a democratic cabin-boy one day turned and told him to stow his Hapsburg lip, the beautiful ex-opera-dancer burst out laughing, and Johann agreed in future to be called Archduke only on Sundays. With their eldest son, now a fine young man coming to maturity, the title is expected to expire. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |