Read Online Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jan Morris
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alliance might perhaps be struck with the Confederate States of the South, much more sympathetic to European ways and monarchical instincts than were Abraham Lincoln’s modernist northerners.
A French expedition accordingly invaded Mexico, drove Juárez out of Mexico City, installed a puppet administration and awaited a new Emperor of Mexico from Europe. Who better to send than Maximilian the Habsburg, with Carlotta of the Belgians as his Empress? His love-castle at Trieste was not yet completed, the trees were still saplings that he had planted with his own hand, the last of the ornamental statuary had yet to be installed in the park, when a Mexican deputation arrived at Mir-amar to offer him the throne. Maximilian was understandably reluctant, but he obeyed his brother’s wishes and sailed off with Carlotta to Mexico in the 2,600-ton frigate Novara , recently converted from sail to steam in a Trieste shipyard. He was never to see his Miramar again, for the French presently deserted him, the Mexicans put him against a wall and shot him, and Carlotta was left to return to Europe and go mad.
The castle, its name now Italianized as Miramare, is Maximilian’s only remaining memorial in Trieste: that statue of him outside Revoltella’s house was eventually pulled down after all, and stands today in the castle park. Miramare is a museum now, and full of grief. Its lavish royal trophies are pathetically ironic—none more so than the crimson canopied bed that Napoleon III gave Maximilian and Carlotta as a wedding present, or the marble-topped table, a present from Pope Pius X, upon which Maximilian had signed his suicidal commitment to the Mexicans. Two big celebratory pictures by dell’Acqua hang in the castle’s Historical Room, to pile on the agony. In one Maximilian, in a brass-buttoned frock coat, is accepting from a respectful huddle of Mexican functionaries, including the Archbishop of Mexico City, the invitation to become their Emperor. In another the Archdukely couple, standing in a barge rowed by bearded sailors and flying an imperial ensign, are offering a restrained goodbye to a crowd of well-wishers on the castle steps, while a second, less dignified audience waves its hats from the jetty beyond. Boat-crews salute with raised oars, and off-shore the frigate awaits them dressed overall.
The castle has often been unlucky, and gloomy legend attends it. The Empress Elizabeth, Franz Joseph’s consort, often stayed there, and was eventually stabbed to death at Geneva. Carlotta briefly lived there, and in the end went off her head. The German Kaiser Wilhelm II stayed there once, and soon had to abdicate his throne. The first King of Albania spent a few nights there, and his throne lasted only six months. The Duke of Aosta sailed away from Miramare to be Italian Viceroy of Ethiopia, and never returned to Italy. When the British General Bernard Freyberg chose it as his headquarters at the end of the second world war he preferred to be on the safe side, and slept in the garden; but one of his American successors defied superstition and was later killed in Korea, and another died in a car crash on his way back to Trieste from the United States.
For me looking out from Miramare’s luxurious drawing-rooms, hung with chandeliers and royal portraits, and equipped with tinted windows to add lustre to the view—looking across the empty water to the city of Trieste is almost an ecstasy of the poignant. Once when I was there a frightful thunder-storm burst, and a few raindrops seeped through the ceiling of the castle’s throne room to fall heavily on the floor: only a few of us were present, and with silent respect we stood around the spot as the water slowly and rhythmically fell—drip, drop, drip, drop, like the sad ticking of time. Shortly before he died Maximilian wrote from Mexico ordering two thousand nightingales to be sent to him from Miramar, and I can still imagine them, freed from their cages, fluttering westward
A French expedition accordingly invaded Mexico, drove Juárez out of Mexico City, installed a puppet administration and awaited a new Emperor of Mexico from Europe. Who better to send than Maximilian the Habsburg, with Carlotta of the Belgians as his Empress? His love-castle at Trieste was not yet completed, the trees were still saplings that he had planted with his own hand, the last of the ornamental statuary had yet to be installed in the park, when a Mexican deputation arrived at Mir-amar to offer him the throne. Maximilian was understandably reluctant, but he obeyed his brother’s wishes and sailed off with Carlotta to Mexico in the 2,600-ton frigate Novara , recently converted from sail to steam in a Trieste shipyard. He was never to see his Miramar again, for the French presently deserted him, the Mexicans put him against a wall and shot him, and Carlotta was left to return to Europe and go mad.
The castle, its name now Italianized as Miramare, is Maximilian’s only remaining memorial in Trieste: that statue of him outside Revoltella’s house was eventually pulled down after all, and stands today in the castle park. Miramare is a museum now, and full of grief. Its lavish royal trophies are pathetically ironic—none more so than the crimson canopied bed that Napoleon III gave Maximilian and Carlotta as a wedding present, or the marble-topped table, a present from Pope Pius X, upon which Maximilian had signed his suicidal commitment to the Mexicans. Two big celebratory pictures by dell’Acqua hang in the castle’s Historical Room, to pile on the agony. In one Maximilian, in a brass-buttoned frock coat, is accepting from a respectful huddle of Mexican functionaries, including the Archbishop of Mexico City, the invitation to become their Emperor. In another the Archdukely couple, standing in a barge rowed by bearded sailors and flying an imperial ensign, are offering a restrained goodbye to a crowd of well-wishers on the castle steps, while a second, less dignified audience waves its hats from the jetty beyond. Boat-crews salute with raised oars, and off-shore the frigate awaits them dressed overall.
The castle has often been unlucky, and gloomy legend attends it. The Empress Elizabeth, Franz Joseph’s consort, often stayed there, and was eventually stabbed to death at Geneva. Carlotta briefly lived there, and in the end went off her head. The German Kaiser Wilhelm II stayed there once, and soon had to abdicate his throne. The first King of Albania spent a few nights there, and his throne lasted only six months. The Duke of Aosta sailed away from Miramare to be Italian Viceroy of Ethiopia, and never returned to Italy. When the British General Bernard Freyberg chose it as his headquarters at the end of the second world war he preferred to be on the safe side, and slept in the garden; but one of his American successors defied superstition and was later killed in Korea, and another died in a car crash on his way back to Trieste from the United States.
For me looking out from Miramare’s luxurious drawing-rooms, hung with chandeliers and royal portraits, and equipped with tinted windows to add lustre to the view—looking across the empty water to the city of Trieste is almost an ecstasy of the poignant. Once when I was there a frightful thunder-storm burst, and a few raindrops seeped through the ceiling of the castle’s throne room to fall heavily on the floor: only a few of us were present, and with silent respect we stood around the spot as the water slowly and rhythmically fell—drip, drop, drip, drop, like the sad ticking of time. Shortly before he died Maximilian wrote from Mexico ordering two thousand nightingales to be sent to him from Miramar, and I can still imagine them, freed from their cages, fluttering westward