Schönbrunn Palace

“ Emperor Franz had thrown open his palace to his illustrious guests. At a rough calculation, the imperial residence held, at that particular moment, two emperors, a similar number of empresses, four kings, one queen, two heirs to thrones (one royal, the other imperial) , two grand-duchesses, and three princes. The young family of the emperor had to be relegated to Schönbrunn. Attracted by the novelty of all this, an immense crowd surrounded the palace at all hours, eager to catch a glimpse of29 the members of a gathering unique in the annals of history. ”

“ Within three days I found myself in the palace of Schönbrunn.
Of all my clients Francis-Joseph is the most unapproachable. Modern ideas of democratic equality find little encouragement in the Austrian Court. [198] After the friendly bonhomie of the German Kaiser, and the tactful kindness of the King of England, the Austrian sovereign’s manner affects one disagreeably: it is like touching a lump of ice. ”

“ The Imperial Menagerie of the palace of Schonbrunn, Vienna, was founded about 1752. The public are admitted free to the greater part of the grounds, but the gardens and collection are the property of and are supported by the emperor of Austria. ”

“ Both husband and wife greatly preferred to their gorgeous palace at Vienna a smaller house which they possessed in the neighborhood, called Schönbrunn, where they could lay aside their state, and enjoy the unpretending pleasures of domestic and rural life, cultivating their garden, and, as far as the imperious calls of public affairs would allow them time, watching over the education of their children, to whom the example of their own tastes and habits was imperceptibly affording the best of all lessons, a preference for simple and innocent pleasures. ”

“ The Archbishop of Vienna, with a retinue of priests, actually came out to Schönbrunn to administer it, but they were met downstairs by Frau Catherina Schraatt, who told them that it would frighten him to death, and induced them to return without carrying out their mission. Archduke Francis Ferdinand arrived at the capital. He and his morganatic wife, Duchess Hohenberg, established themselves at the Belvedere Palace for the season. The Archduke, a man who lacked refinement and who was utterly devoid of tact, immediately began to act as if he had already succeeded to the throne. ”

“ The chief features of the town are the Cathedral of St. Stephen, the Royal Palace of Schönbrunn, and the Prater.
The Cathedral, founded in 1144, is in an ornate style of Gothic, and its soaring spire, seen far and wide over the country, is balanced and finished by the pointed lesser towers, the gables and the windows, so that the principal note is one of uplifting. At one time the building, like most old churches, was encumbered by a mass of houses, hovels, etc., which clung to its sides like barnacles, but these were all swept away, and the glorious architecture is now seen to advantage. ”

“ The great proprietors pay them for the right of sporting over their own lands. In faet, whatever may be the case with the higher classes, the people here seem to have it much their own way since 1848. We spent a Sunday afternoon in the palace gardens at Schonbrunn, into which half the populace of Vienna, smoking vile-smelling cigars, seemed to have poured in omnibuses and cabs, which stood before the palace, and on foot. ”

“ The beautiful grove which serves as park and garden to the palace of Schoenbrunn is much too small to belong to an imperial residence; but, on the other hand, it would be hard to find one more beautiful or better arranged. The park of Versailles is grander and more imposing; but it has not the picturesque irregularity, the fantastic and unexpected beauties, of the park of Schoenbrunn, and more closely resembles the park at Malmaison. ”

“ And to the costly expenditure of that fevered interval may be dated the ruin of some of the richest of the Austrian nobility. To maintain a corresponding style, and to receive the proud guests with suitable magnificence, enormous “allowances” were made to the French generals; while in striking contrast to all the splendor, the Emperor Napoleon lived at Schönbrunn with a most simple household and restricted retinue. ”

“ Castles, fortresses, somber convents and the Gothic palaces of the old Bohemian monarchs, occupying every picturesque locality, as gray with age as the eternal crags upon which they stand, and exhibiting every fantastic variety of architecture, present an almost unrivaled aspect of beauty and of grandeur. The Palace on the Hill alone is larger than the imperial palace at Vienna, containing over four hundred apartments, some of them being rooms of magnificent dimensions. ”

“ When the French army occupied Vienna, some time after the battle of Austerlitz, two sub-officers belonging to the forty-sixth and fiftieth regiments of the line, having had a dispute, determined to fight a duel, and chose for the place of combat a spot situated at the extremity of a plain which adjoined the palace of Schoenbrunn, the Emperor's place of residence. ”

“ The Chalcondylas palace, however princely, was not exactly a model residence nor noted for its austere manners and strict code of morals: when the princess went to Vienna, now and again, to replenish her wardrobe, the prince would also disappear for a few days, in mysterious company, to his hunting-box; and the three children and the host of servants, like so many savages and cannibals let loose, remained masters of the house. ”

“ On the Danube, on board the Dampschiff
(steamboat) Maria-Anna, bound for Linz, 5th June.
Schönbrunn, the Versailles of Austria, is much like Versailles itself on a smaller scale, but much less magnificent. I visited the grounds with Endlicher, and also visited the botanic garden attached, under the care of M. Schott. [104] The garden is very finely arranged, but all that is particularly worth seeing is the conservatories and the large collection of exotics, many of them very old like those of Kew. It is richer than Kew in Palms, Aroideæ, etc., but in other things it seems not quite equal. ”

“ They passed most of their time at Schönbrünn, which both the emperor and empress preferred to Vienna, and it was so near the capital that ministers and ambassadors could easily drive out to consult them when needful. In their leisure moments, which were few, it rested them to watch the growth of their flowers, or to plan alterations in their garden, while the empress would sometimes go to see the poor in their cottages, and take Marie Antoinette with her. ”

“ Numbers of people, tired by the fighting and excitement, had gone to rest; others, shocked by the excesses committed, had withdrawn; and indeed the broadening daylight made every one look more or less ashamed of the night's events.
From the talk of the rioters we learned that the emperor had left Schönbrunn with his family for Olmutz, and that Count Auersperg had sent four thousand troops to form an escort. The rest of the army had been stationed in the gardens of the Schwartzenberg and Belvidere palaces on heights commanding the city. ”

“ Hedwig, with its dome in imitation of the Pantheon, its Latin cross and window arches beaming in pale yellow, made a fine background for the only unilluminated building, the palace of the Emperor. From the Opera House, the Arsenal, and the University, crowns and elaborate designs were burning, yet unconsumed. Most elaborately decorated of all Berlin buildings was the Academy of Arts and Sciences, opposite the Imperial Palace, with colossal warriors in bronze keeping guard at its portals, and the Angel of Peace laying a laurel wreath on the altar of Fatherland as its decorative centre-piece. ”

“ The Empress of Austria, the King and Queen of Bavaria, besides several other personages in far from robust health, who feared the cold, had gone to Schönbrunn in closed carriages. A magnificent fête had been prepared and many invitations issued. The return was to take place at night and by torchlight. After the banquet to which all those who made up the sleighing party were invited, the principal Viennese actors presented one of the prettiest pieces of the French stage, the Cendrillon of M. Étienne, which had been translated into German. A grand ball was to wind up the entertainment. ”

“ A sharp word of command, a second bugle note, and then all was quiet again, save for the slow, measured tread of the sentries at each angle of the ponderous palace.
From without all looked grim and gloomy, in keeping with that strange fate that follows the hapless Hapsbourgs; yet beyond those black walls, in the farther wing of the Imperial palace were life and gaiety and music; indeed there was presented perhaps the most magnificent scene in all Europe. ”

“ After three days we left Donau-Eschingen for Strasburg, a very beautiful town, disfigured by a terribly ugly modern palace, which the Emperor calls the “Railway-palace,” as he considers it to be of that hideously harsh, painful form of architecture we have been accustomed to bear with, for purely utilitarian purposes. “They built it before my time,” he hastens to tell every one. “Makes me feel ill every time I see it.” ”

“ We leave them standing on the sky-line, brave, plucky youths burning with zeal and patriotism. They fade into the blue background; and while the Emperor and Empress prolong their ride a little farther, the Princess and I trot the nearest way home to those deserted lessons.
The gardens of the Neues Palais are separated only by a slender railing from those of the small Palace of Sans Souci, notable as the residence of Frederick the Great. On the hill behind the Palace, almost over-shadowing it, stands the famous windmill, the centre of certain legendary and probably apocryphal tales. ”

“ The Emperor alighted at the Marcolini palace, a charming summer residence situated in the faubourg of Friedrichstadt. An immense garden, the beautiful meadows of Osterwise on the banks of the Elbe, in addition to an extremely fine landscape, rendered this sojourn much more attractive than that of the winter palace; and consequently the Emperor was most grateful to the King of Saxony for having prepared it for him. There he led the same life as at Schoenbrunn; reviews every morning, much work during the day, and few distractions in the evening; in fact, more simplicity than display. ”

“ The streets were almost literally impassable, and the Imperial motor cars, moving at snail’s pace from quay to palace through that frenzied sea of people, cheering, singing the national hymn, calling down blessings on the Emperor, was something that will live forever in the memories of all who witnessed it. The Imperial cortège was able, thanks to the police, to reach the Winter Palace at last, but many of the suite were halted by the crowds at the entrance to the great square in front of the palace and had to enter at a side door opening from the small garden to the west. ”

“ The name of fortress would be more appropriate than any other, for the Old Palace; it is a great mass of stone, without columns, without frontal, without order of architecture. Time has gilded the walls with beautiful vermilion tints which the pure blue of the sky sets off marvelously, and the whole structure has that haughty and romantic aspect which accords well with the idea that one forms for oneself of that old Palace of the Seigneurie, the witness, since the date of its erection in the thirteenth century, of so many intrigues, tumults, violent acts, and crimes. ”

“ The royal infidel took pleasure in profaning even the religion of the tomb by raising mausoleums to his dogs; he had marked out a burying-place near them for himself, less from contempt of mankind than an ostentation of annihilation.
They showed me the New Palace, already falling to pieces. In the old palace of Potsdam, they preserve the tobacco-stains, the worn and soiled chairs, in a word, all the traces of the renegade Prince's uncleanliness. This place immortalizes at once the dirt of the cynic, the impudence of the atheist, the tyranny of the despot, and the glory of the soldier. ”

“ The Pavilion was, in fact, the product of an ill-informed enthusiasm for Chinese architecture, mingled with that of India and Constantinople, and was built as a Marine Palace, to combine the glories of the Summer Palace at Pekin with those of the Alhambra. It suffers nowadays, much more than it need do, from the utter absence of exterior colouring. ”

“ I have not yet seen their emperor; but their great people are always strutting and prancing before our eyes, not, indeed, in costly robes, but all simply clad in one uniform, all alike black, all alike grey-eyed, and all singing one song, only with the most amusing varieties between young and old, and great and small. They are not careful to have a great palace and hall of assembly, for their hall is vaulted with the beautiful, broad sky, their floor is the field strewn with fair, green branches, and their walls reach as far as the ends of the world. Neither do they require steeds and armour ”

“ The Palace of la Favorita in the Suburb of Vienna, where the Emperor spends the Summer, is even inferior to that in the City. ’Tis a very large House, built upon the Highway, without any Court before it, without Symmetry or Architecture, and which, as to the Outside, looks more like a Convent, than a Royal Palace. The Inside perfectly answers the Outside. There’s an Ascent to the Apartments by a great Stair-case,47 all of Timber, that leads to a Guard Chamber, which is a Room of no great Extent, and without any manner of Ornament ”