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A Typical Austrian Noble

The Austrians possessed many excellent and attractive qualities, but, notwithstanding, especially among the higher classes, they were, before all things else, a pleasure-loving people. They all possessed a common characteristic, an intense passion for pleasure of every kind, which not even the most grinding poverty could wholly suppress. Notwithstanding the Austrian noble's love for country life, he, like the Russian landed proprietor, was not remarkable for his business capacity in the affairs of everyday life. There were exceptions, of course, but as a rule, and especially among the smaller landowners, Austrian estates could rarely be taken as models of good management. This was partly due to the want of capital, but besides this there was a recklessness in the typical Austrian noble's character, an incapacity to take life seriously, which was generally only too evident in the administration of his property.

Take as an example the family of one Austrian noble of the mid-19th Century. If in the management of his private affairs there was somewhat more of the national laissez-faire than among the average of his neighbors, it was only a question of degree, and his manner of life may be regarded as a type of that led by a very large proportion of the class to which he belonged. The house was approached by an avenue of fine trees running through several acres of park, gardens, and pleasure-grounds. Fifty years ago his father had erected a monumental gateway, with a gatekeeper's lodge adjoining, but the latter was still unfinished, and the railing-in of the park and pleasure-grounds had never even been attempted. The peasant laborers upon the home farm had made a short cut through the grounds beside the gateway. This at length was employed by every one, and the approach to the house was along a bone-shaking road that skirted the "carriage drive," a mass of weeds and wild flowers, with here and there in the centre a promising young fir or pine tree.

The mansion, which dated from the middle of the eighteenth century, was built upon the model of the French chateaux of the period, but had never been finished. It would, indeed, have cost a fortune to complete it upon the scale upon which it had been commenced. The gardens and grounds alone would have needed a small army of gardeners to keep them in order. Only the entrance hall, the principal salon, dining-room, and about a dozen other rooms were habitable. All the rest remained exactly as they did when, a century and a half ago, the noble's great-grandfather suddenly realised that the house he was building would need far more than his whole fortune to complete. A magnificent stairway led to rooms in which not even the floor had been laid down, and which still remained a wilderness of bricks, planks, and plaster, recalling to my mind the unfinished rooms in the palace of King Ludwig of Bavaria at the Chiemsee. The furniture in the habitable rooms was a curious mixture of styles. In the drawing- room were handsome ormolu tables and inlaid cabinets of considerable value, side by side with ordinary cane-seated chairs of cheap Viennese make. In all the other rooms similar incongruities were to be found. In one were a splendid polished floor beautifully inlaid and a finely painted ceiling; in another the floor was of roughly stained wood, but partly covered with rich and expensive rugs and carpets. Upon plastered yellow-washed walls were hung fine old family portraits in richly gilded frames of carved wood, each of which was a work of art in itself.

A large conservatory had been built years ago, but the heating apparatus had never been provided. A tennis-court beside the house was kept in excellent order, but beyond, the view of a beautiful little ornamental lake was completely cut off by the wild growth of willows and other bushes upon its banks.

The owner of the estate, a man of education and refinement, was perfectly conscious of all its deficiencies and incongruities. He was always going to complete the old family mansion "when his fortunes changed," but a seeming incapacity to look at the practical side of life, or even to take the necessary measures to secure the ends he had most at heart, frustrated all his spasmodic attempts at setting things right. His fortune was by no means inconsiderable, but losses at cards, the bane of Austrian as it is of Russian society, kept him in a state of chronic impecuniosity. Open-handed, hospitable, lavish, spending money with both hands upon wholly needless extravagances, with frequent alternations of extreme economy in matters connected with his property that would have considerably increased his income, he was nevertheless a charming host, and possessed of the special fascination of manner that renders the Austrians of the higher classes popular almost everywhere.

A small Austrian landowner of good family would not lose caste if it were known that his lands were all mortgaged, his crops often sold in advance, and that the old family mansion showed evident signs of becoming a more or less picturesque ruin; for only too large a number of his friends and neighbours are in the same plight. The urgent demands of his property for improved agricultural machinery, of his land for drainage, or of his farm buildings for repairs, are all put off to a more convenient season if the money be needed for a grand ball to which all the notabilities of the district are invited, the entertainment of a houseful of visitors from Vienna, or in winter a splendid fete upon the ice.

Their intercourse with the working classes on their estates, and with the poorer peasantry in their neighbourhood, is natural and unconstrained, for their respective social positions are clearly defined and recognised on both sides. In the world of literature and art, music and the drama, it is the same. For generations the houses of the Austrian nobility both in town and country have always been thrown open to literary men and artists, quite irrespective of their fortunes. As a rule, however, and above all in the more conservative country districts, their doors would be as rigorously closed to the nouveau riche, however great his wealth might be, if that was all he had to offer. Of course, in Austria as elsewhere, the half-ruined representatives of grand old historical families are sometimes willing to restore their fortunes by marriage with the daughters of commercial or financial millionaires. When such marriages occur, however, it is generally in the families of the highest nobility in Vienna, and far more rarely among the provincial aristocracy residing upon their estates.

The Austrian noble will often reveal his impecunious condition with almost startling frankness, and never dream that he is running the risk of losing caste among his associates by the admission. So long as any means remain of satisfying his craving for pleasure and excitement, he will continue his happy-go-lucky existence to the very brink of disaster; and then, when all is gone, and irretrievable ruin stares him in the face, only too often by his own act, he will quit a world that can no longer offer him any compensation for the trouble of living.