III

THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE

One of the most engrossing of modern mysteries is that which hides the final destination of Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, better known to a generation of newspaper readers as John Orth. In the dawn of July 13, 1890, the barkSanta Margarita,[2]flying the flag of an Austrian merchantman, though her owner and skipper was none other than this wandering scion of the imperial Hapsburgs, set sail from Ensenada, on the southern shore of the great estuary of the Plata, below Buenos Aires, and forthwith vanished from the earth. With her went Johann Salvator, his variety-girl wife and a crew of twenty-six. Though search has been made in every thinkable port, through the distant archipelagoes of the Pacific, in ten thousand outcast towns, and though emissaries have visited all the fabled refuges of missing men, from time to time, over a period of nearly forty years, no sight of any one connected with the lost ship has ever been got, and no man knows with certainty what fate befell her and her princely master.

[2]Sometimes written Sainte Marguerite.

The enigma of his passing is not the only circumstance of curious doubt and romantic coloration that hedges the career of this imperial adventurer. His story, from the beginning, is one marked with dramatic incidents. As much of it as bears upon the final episode will have to be related.

The Archduke Johann Salvator was born at Florence on the twenty-fifth day of November, 1852, the youngest son of Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany, and Maria Antonia of the Two Sicilies. He was, accordingly, a second cousin of the late Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary. At the baptismal font young Johann received enough names to carry any man blissfully through life, his full array having been Johann Nepomuk Salvator Marie Josef Jean Ferdinand Balthazar Louis Gonzaga Peter Alexander Zenobius Antonin.

Archduke Johann was still a child when the Italian revolutionists drove out his father and later united Tuscany to the growing kingdom of Victor Emanuel. So the hero of this account was reared in Austria and educated for the army. Commissioned as a stripling, he rose rapidly in rank for reasons quite other than his family connections. The young prince was endowed with a good mind and notable for independence of thought. He felt, as he expressed it, that he ought to earn his pay, an opinion which led to indefatigable military studies and some well-intentioned, but ill-advised writings. First, the young archduke discovered what he considered faults in the artillery, and he wrote a brochure on the subject. The older heads didn’t like it and had him disciplined. Later on, Johann made a study of military organization and wrote a well-known pamphlet called “Education or Drill,” wherein he attacked the old method of training soldiers as automatons and advised the mental development of the rank and file, in line with policies now generally adopted. But such advanced ideas struck the military masters of fifty years ago as bits of heresy and anarchy. Archduke Johann was disciplined by removal from the army and the withdrawal of his commission. At thirty-five he had reached next to the highest possible rank and been cashiered from it. This in 1887.

Johann Salvator had, however, been much more than a progressive soldier man. He was an accomplished musician, composer of popular waltzes, an oratorio and the operetta “Les Assassins.” He was an historian and publicist, of eminent official standing at least, having collaborated with Crown Prince Rudolf in the widely distributed work, “The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Word and Picture,” which was published in 1886. He was also a distinguished investigator of psychic phenomena, his library on this subject having been the most complete in Europe—a fact suggestive of something abnormal.

Personally the man was both handsome and charming. He was, in spite of imperial rank and military habitude, democratic, simple, friendly, and unaffected. He liked to live the life of a gentleman, with diverse interests in life, now playing the gallant in Vienna—to the high world of the court and the half world of the theater by turns; again retiring to his library and his studies, sometimes vegetating at his country estates and working on his farms. Official trammels and the rigid etiquette of the ancient court seemed to irk him. Still, he seems to have suffered keen chagrin over his dismissal from the army.

Johann Salvator had, from adolescence, been a close personal friend of the Austrian crown prince. This intimacy had extended even to participation in some of the personal and sentimental escapades for which the ill-starred Rudolf was remarkable. Apparently the two men hardly held an opinion apart, and it was accepted that, with the death of the aging emperor and the accession of his son, Johann Salvator would be a most powerful personage.

Suddenly, in 1889, all these high hopes and promises came to earth. After some rumblings and rumorings at Schoenbrunn, it was announced that Johann Salvator had petitioned the emperor for permission to resign all rank and title, sever his official connection with the royal house, and even give up his knighthood in the Order of the Golden Fleece. The petitioner also asked for the right to call himself Johann Orth, after the estate and castle on the Gmündensee, which was the favorite abode of the prince and of his aged mother. All these requests were officially granted and confirmed by the emperor, and so the man John Orth came into being.

The first of the two Orth mysteries lies concealed behind the official records of this strange resignation from rank and honor. Even to-day, after Orth has been missing for a whole generation, after all those who might have been concerned in keeping secret the motives and measures of those times have been gathered to the dust, and after the empire itself has been dissolved into its defeated components, the facts in the matter cannot be stated with any confidence. There are two principal versions of the affair, and both will have to be given so that the reader may make his own choice. The popular or romantic account deserves to be considered first.

In the eighties the stage of Vienna was graced by several handsome young women of the name Stübel. One of them, Lori, achieved considerable operatic distinction. Another sailed to New York with her brother and appeared in operetta and in musical comedy at the old Casino. The youngest of these sisters was Ludmilla Stübel, commonly called Millie, and on that account sometimes, erroneously, Emilie.

This daring and charming girl began her career in a Viennese operetta chorus and rose to the rank of principal. She was not, so far as I can gather from the contemporary newspapers, remarkable for voice or dramatic ability, but her “surpassingly voluptuous beauty and piquant manners” won her almost limitless attention and gave her a popularity that reached across the Atlantic. In the middle eighties Fräulein Stübel appeared at the Thalia Theater in the Bowery, New York, then the shrine of German comic opera in the United States, creating the rôles ofBettinain “The Mascot” andViolettein “The Merry War.”

TheNew York Herald, reviewing her American career a few years later, said: “In New York she became somewhat notorious for her risqué costumes. On one occasion Fräulein Stübel attended the Arion Ball in male costume, and created a scene when ejected. This conduct seems to have ended her career in the United States.”

This beautiful and spirited plebeian swam into the ken of Johann Salvator, of Austria, in the fall of 1888, when that impetuous prince had already been dismissed from the army and his other affairs were gathering to the storm that broke some months afterward. Catastrophic events followed rapidly.

~~ MILLIE STÜBEL ~~

In January, 1889, Prince Rudolf was found dead in the hunting lodge at Mayerling, with the Baroness Marie Vetsera, to whom the heir of a hundred kings is said to have been passionately devoted, and with whom he may have died in a suicide pact, though it has been said the crown prince and his sweetheart were murdered by persons whose identity has been sedulously concealed. This mysterious fatality robbed the dispirited Johann Salvator of his closest and most powerful friend. It may have had a good deal to do with what followed.

A few months later Johann Salvator married morganatically his stage beauty. It was now, after the lapse of a few months, that he resigned all rank, title, and privileges, left Austria with his wife, and married her civilly in London.

Naturally enough, it has generally been held that the death of the crown prince and the romance with the singer explained everything. The archduke, in disgrace with the army, bereft of his truest and most illustrious friend, and deeply infatuated with a girl whom he could not fully legitimatize as his wife, so long as he wore the purple of his birth, had decided to “surrender all for love” and seek solace in foreign lands with the lady of his choice. This interpretation has all the elements of color and sweetness needed for conviction in the minds of the sentimental. Unfortunately, it does not seem to bear skeptical examination.

Even granting that Archduke Johann Salvator was a man of independent mind and quixotic temperament, that he was embittered by his demotion from military rank, and that he must have been greatly depressed by the death of Rudolf, who was both his bosom friend and his most powerful intercessor at court, no such extreme proceeding as the renunciation of all rank and the severing of family ties was called for.

It is true, too, that the loss of his only son through an affair with a woman of inferior rank, had embittered Franz Josef and probably caused the monarch to look with uncommon harshness upon similar liaisons among the members of the Hapsburg family. Undoubtedly the morganatic marriage of his second cousin with the shining moth of the theater displeased the monarch and widened the breach between him and his kinsman; but it must be remembered that Johann Salvator was only a distant cousin; that he was not even remotely in line for succession to the throne; that he had already been deprived of military or other official connection with the government; and that affairs of this kind have been by no means rare among Hapsburg scions.

Dour and tyrannical as the emperor may have been, he was no Anglo-Saxon, no moralist. His own life had not been quite free of sentimental episodes, and he was, after all, the heir to the proudest tradition in all Europe, head of the world’s oldest reigning house, and a believer in the sacredness of royal rank. He must have looked upon a morganatic union as something not uncommon or specially disgraceful, whereas a renunciation of rank and privilege can only have struck him as a precedent of the gravest kind.

Thus, Johann Salvator did not need to take any extreme step because of his histrionic wife. He might have remained in Austria happily enough, aside from a few snubs and the exclusion from further official participation in politics. He might have gone to any country in Europe and become the center of a distinguished society. His children would probably have been ennobled, and even his wife eventually given the same sort of recognition that was accorded the consorts of other princes in similar case, notably the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination at Sarajevo precipitated the World War. Instead, Johann Salvator made the most complete and unprecedented severance from all that seemed most inalienably his. Historians have had to interpret this action in another light, and their explanation forms the second version of the incident, probably the true one.

In 1887, as a result of one of the interminable struggles for hegemony in the Balkans, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha had been elected Prince of Bulgaria, but Russia had refused to recognize this sovereign, and the other powers, out of deference to the Czar, had likewise refrained from giving their approval. Austria was in a specially delicate position as regards this matter. She was the natural rival of Russia for dominance in the Balkans, but her statesmen did not feel strong enough openly to oppose the Russian course. Besides, they had their eyes fixed on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ferdinand had been an officer in the Austrian army. He was well liked at Franz Josef’s court, and stood high in the regard of Crown Prince Rudolf. What is most germane to the present question is that he was the friend of Johann Salvator.

In 1887, and for a number of years following, Russia attempted to drive the unwelcome German princeling from the Bulgarian throne by various military cabals, acts of brigandage, diplomatic intrigues, and the like. Naturally the young ruler’s friends in other countries rallied to his aid. Among them was Johann Salvator. It is known that he interceded with Rudolf for Ferdinand, and he may have approached the emperor. Failing to get action at Vienna, he is said to have formed a plan of a military character which was calculated to force the hands of Austria, Germany, and England, bringing them into the field against Russia, to the end that Ferdinand might be recognized and more firmly seated. The plot was discovered in time, according to those who hold this theory of the incident, and Johann Salvator came under the most severe displeasure of the emperor.

It is asserted by those who have studied the case dispassionately, that Johann Salvator’s rash course was one that came very near involving Austria in a Russian war, and that the most emphatic exhibitions of the emperor’s reprehension and anger were necessary. Accordingly, it is said, Franz Josef demanded the surrender of all rank and privileges by his cousin and exiled him from the empire for life. Here, at least, is a story of a more probable character, inasmuch as it presents provocation for the unprecedented harshness with which Archduke Johann Salvator was treated. No doubt his morganatic marriage and his other conflicts with higher authority were seized upon as disguises under which to hide the secret diplomatic motive.

Louisa, the runaway crown princess of Saxony, started a tale to the effect that her cousin, Johann Salvator, had torn the Order of the Golden Fleece from his breast in a rage and thrown it at the emperor, which thing can not have happened since the negotiations between the emperor and his recreant cousin were conducted at a distance through official emissaries or by mail.

Again, the Countess Marie Larisch, niece of the Empress Elizabeth, recounts even more fantastic yarns. She says in so many words that Crown Prince Rudolf was in a conspiracy with Johann Salvator and others to seize the crown of Hungary away from the emperor and so establish Rudolf as king before his time. It was fear of discovery in this plot, she continues, that led to the suicide of Rudolf. A few days after Mayerling, she recites, she delivered to Johann Salvator a locked box (apparently containing secret papers) on a promenade in the mist and he kissed her hand, exclaimed that she had saved his life—and more in the same strain.

Both these elevated ladies, it will be recalled, wrote or talked in self-justification and with the usual stupidity of the guilty. We may dismiss their yarns as mere women’s gabble and return to the solid fact that Johann Salvator, impetuous, a little mad and smarting under his military humiliations, tried to mix into Balkan politics with the result that he found himself in the position of a bungling interloper, almost a betrayer of his country’s interests.

Less than two years ago some further light was thrown upon the affair of the missing archduke through what have passed as letters taken from the Austrian archives after the fall of the Hapsburgs. These letters were published in various European and American newspapers and journals and they may be, as asserted, the veritable official documents. The portions I quote are taken from the Sunday Magazine of theNew York Worldof January 10 and January 17, 1926. I must remark that I regard them with suspicion.

The first letter purports to be a report on the violent misconduct of Johann Salvator at Venice, as follows:

“Consul General Alexander, Baron Warsberg, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Kalnoky:“I regarded it to be my duty to obtain information about the relations and meetings of Archduke Johann, and am sorry to have to report to Your Excellency that,in a rather unworthy manner, he had intercourse on board and in public with alady lodged on board of the yacht, which intercourse has not remained unobserved and which he could not be induced to veil in spite of the remonstrances of (the President of the Chamber) Baron de Fin—Baron de Fin was so offended that, after much quarrel and trouble which made him ill, he left the ship and lodged in a little inn. He, on his part, reported to His Majesty the Emperor, and the Archduke is said to have, after five months of silence, written for the first time to His Majesty in order to complain of his Chamberlain. This unpleasant situation, still more troublesome abroad than it would have been at home, has been solved last Sunday, the 20th inst, by the sudden advent of Field Marshal Lieut. Count Uxküll, who brought the Imperial Order that His Imperial Highness immediately return to Orth at the Sea of Gmünden—to which he immediately submitted.“Baron de Fin, who is still living here and is on friendly terms with me, can give to the Archduke no certificate that would be bad enough. According to his experience and observation, His Highness does not know any other interests in the world than those of his person, and even this only in the common sense; that he, for instance, wished to ascend the throne of Bulgaria, not out of enthusiasm for the people or for the political idea but only in order to lose the throne after a short time and in this way to be freed from the influence of His Majesty, the Emperor. Baron de Fin pretends that there would be no other means to cure that completely undisciplined and immoral character but by dismissing him formally from the imperial family and by allowing him, as it is his desire, to enjoy under an adopted name, that liberty that he pretends to deem as the highest good. He believes him (the Archduke) to have such a 'dose’ of pride that he would return with a penitent heart, if he then would be treated according to his new rank. I also have observed this haughtiness of the Prince despite his talks of liberalism.”

“Consul General Alexander, Baron Warsberg, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Kalnoky:

“I regarded it to be my duty to obtain information about the relations and meetings of Archduke Johann, and am sorry to have to report to Your Excellency that,in a rather unworthy manner, he had intercourse on board and in public with alady lodged on board of the yacht, which intercourse has not remained unobserved and which he could not be induced to veil in spite of the remonstrances of (the President of the Chamber) Baron de Fin—Baron de Fin was so offended that, after much quarrel and trouble which made him ill, he left the ship and lodged in a little inn. He, on his part, reported to His Majesty the Emperor, and the Archduke is said to have, after five months of silence, written for the first time to His Majesty in order to complain of his Chamberlain. This unpleasant situation, still more troublesome abroad than it would have been at home, has been solved last Sunday, the 20th inst, by the sudden advent of Field Marshal Lieut. Count Uxküll, who brought the Imperial Order that His Imperial Highness immediately return to Orth at the Sea of Gmünden—to which he immediately submitted.

“Baron de Fin, who is still living here and is on friendly terms with me, can give to the Archduke no certificate that would be bad enough. According to his experience and observation, His Highness does not know any other interests in the world than those of his person, and even this only in the common sense; that he, for instance, wished to ascend the throne of Bulgaria, not out of enthusiasm for the people or for the political idea but only in order to lose the throne after a short time and in this way to be freed from the influence of His Majesty, the Emperor. Baron de Fin pretends that there would be no other means to cure that completely undisciplined and immoral character but by dismissing him formally from the imperial family and by allowing him, as it is his desire, to enjoy under an adopted name, that liberty that he pretends to deem as the highest good. He believes him (the Archduke) to have such a 'dose’ of pride that he would return with a penitent heart, if he then would be treated according to his new rank. I also have observed this haughtiness of the Prince despite his talks of liberalism.”

Then follows what may well have been the recreant archduke’s letter of abdication, thus:

“Your Majesty:“My behavior for nearly two years will have convinced Your Majesty that, abstaining from all interests that did not concern me, I have lived in retirement in the endeavor to remove Your Majesty’s displeasure with me.“Being too young to rest forever and too proud to live as a paid idler, my situation has become painful, even intolerable, to me. Checked by a justified pride from asking for re-employment in the army, I had the alternative either to continue the unworthy existence of a princely idler or—as an ordinary human being, to seek a new existence, a new profession. I was finally urged to a decision in the latter sense, as my whole nature refused to fit into the frame of my position and my personal independence must be compensation for what I have lost.“I therefore resign voluntarily, and respectfully return the titles and rights of an Archduke, as well as my military title into the hands of Your Majesty, but request Your Majesty submissively to deign to grant me a civil name.“Far from my fatherland, I shall seek a purpose in life, and my livelihood probably at sea, and try to find a humble but honorable position. If, however, Your Majesty should call your subjects to arms, Your Highness will permit me to return home and—though only as a common soldier—to devote my life to Your Majesty.“Your Majesty may deign to believe me that this step was only impeded by the thought of giving offense to Your Majesty—Your Majesty to whose Highness I am particularly and infinitely indebted and devoted from the bottom of my heart. But as I have to pay for this step dearly enough—with my entire social existence, with all that means hope and future—Your Majesty will pardon“Your Majesty’s Most Loyally Obedient Servant,“Archduke Johann, Fml.”

“Your Majesty:

“My behavior for nearly two years will have convinced Your Majesty that, abstaining from all interests that did not concern me, I have lived in retirement in the endeavor to remove Your Majesty’s displeasure with me.

“Being too young to rest forever and too proud to live as a paid idler, my situation has become painful, even intolerable, to me. Checked by a justified pride from asking for re-employment in the army, I had the alternative either to continue the unworthy existence of a princely idler or—as an ordinary human being, to seek a new existence, a new profession. I was finally urged to a decision in the latter sense, as my whole nature refused to fit into the frame of my position and my personal independence must be compensation for what I have lost.

“I therefore resign voluntarily, and respectfully return the titles and rights of an Archduke, as well as my military title into the hands of Your Majesty, but request Your Majesty submissively to deign to grant me a civil name.

“Far from my fatherland, I shall seek a purpose in life, and my livelihood probably at sea, and try to find a humble but honorable position. If, however, Your Majesty should call your subjects to arms, Your Highness will permit me to return home and—though only as a common soldier—to devote my life to Your Majesty.

“Your Majesty may deign to believe me that this step was only impeded by the thought of giving offense to Your Majesty—Your Majesty to whose Highness I am particularly and infinitely indebted and devoted from the bottom of my heart. But as I have to pay for this step dearly enough—with my entire social existence, with all that means hope and future—Your Majesty will pardon

“Your Majesty’s Most Loyally Obedient Servant,“Archduke Johann, Fml.”

Whether one cousin would use such a tone to another, even an emperor, is a question which every reader must consider for himself, quite as he must decide whether grown sons of kings were capable of such middle-class sentiment.

There follows the reply of Franz Josef which has the ring of genuineness:

“Dear Archduke Johann:“In compliance with your request addressed to me, I feel induced to decide the following:“1. I sanction your renunciation of the right of being regarded and treated as a Prince of the Imperial House, and permit you to adopt a civil name, which you are to bring to my notice after you have made your choice.“2. I consent to your resigning your commission as an officer and relieve you at the same time of your responsibility for the Corps Artillery Regiment No. 2.“3. I decide at the same time that you are to be struck out of the 'Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece.’“4. In disposing the suspension of your appenage (Civil List) from my court donation, I will inform your brother Archduke Ferdinand of Tuscany of the suspension of your share out of the family funds proceeds.“5. Without my express permission you are forbidden to pass the frontiers of the monarchy from your residence abroad for a permanent or even a temporary stay in Austria. Finally,“6. You are to sign the written declaration which the bearer of this, my manuscript will submit to you for this purpose and which he is charged to return to me after the signature is affixed.“Franz Josef.”“Vienna, Oct. 12, 1889.”

“Dear Archduke Johann:

“In compliance with your request addressed to me, I feel induced to decide the following:

“1. I sanction your renunciation of the right of being regarded and treated as a Prince of the Imperial House, and permit you to adopt a civil name, which you are to bring to my notice after you have made your choice.

“2. I consent to your resigning your commission as an officer and relieve you at the same time of your responsibility for the Corps Artillery Regiment No. 2.

“3. I decide at the same time that you are to be struck out of the 'Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece.’

“4. In disposing the suspension of your appenage (Civil List) from my court donation, I will inform your brother Archduke Ferdinand of Tuscany of the suspension of your share out of the family funds proceeds.

“5. Without my express permission you are forbidden to pass the frontiers of the monarchy from your residence abroad for a permanent or even a temporary stay in Austria. Finally,

“6. You are to sign the written declaration which the bearer of this, my manuscript will submit to you for this purpose and which he is charged to return to me after the signature is affixed.

“Franz Josef.”

“Vienna, Oct. 12, 1889.”

Some correspondence followed on the subject of John Orth’s retention of his Austrian citizenship, which the emperor wished at first to deny him.

In any event, Johann Salvator, Archduke of Austria, and Prince of Tuscany, became John Orth, left Austria in the winter of 1889, purchased and refitted the barkSanta Margarita, had her taken to England, and there joined her with his operetta wife. He sailed for Buenos Aires in the early spring, with a cargo of cement, and reached the Rio de la Plata in May. His wife went ahead by steamer to join him at Buenos Aires.

I quote here, from the same source as the preceding, part of a last letter from John Orth to his mother at Gmünden:

“The country here is not very beautiful. Vast plains—the grazing grounds for flocks of bullocks, horses and ostriches. The towns are much more vivid. Everything is to be found here even at the smaller places—electric lights, telephone, all comforts of modern civilization. The population, however, is not very sympathetic, a combination of doubtful elements from all countries, striving to become rich as soon as possible; corruption, fraud, theft, are the order of the day.“I have made the acquaintance of our Consul. The officer is a certain Mikulicz, a cultured, most amiable man. The Honorary Consul is Mihanovich, a man who—a few years ago was a porter—and now is a millionaire. Social obligations have caused much loss of time, which could have been better used for business affairs. Imagine that nothing can be done in Ensenada, but we have always to go to Buenos Aires. And we have to hurry. The unloading of the cargo, negotiations about a new cargo, which I could have accepted if my merchant had not prevented me, changes of the board staff, purchase of supplies, work on board, the collection and despatch of money, &c., &c. The staff-officers have all to be changed. I have the command. Capt. Sodich is offended by the fact that I have sent away here in Plata a certain 'Sensal,’ toward whom he was too indulgent and who was a man of bad reputation. He has given me to understand, in the most impolite manner, that he could not remain under such circumstances, that he did not permit himself to be treated as a mere zero with regard to the business on land, and therefore he resigned the command, &c. I, of course, accepted his resignation, and also remained firm when he afterward returned to excuse himself. The second lieutenant, Lucich, has shown the insolence to deceive the consignee and by calculating forty-eight tons more in favor of the ship, believing to do me a favor by such an action. I have given to the consignee the necessary indemnification—and to restore the compromised honor of the ship, have dismissed the lieutenant. The third lieutenant, Leva, took fright of the sea and quit voluntarily to seek his fortune on land. Also the boatswain Giaconi asked for his dismissal, so much the fire had frightened him.[3][3]There had been a fire on theSanta Margaritaon the way to Buenos Aires.“As present I have First Lieutenant, Jellecich, who acts as Captain and has the command—a man of forty-five years, very quiet, experienced and practical. Further, a Second Lieutenant, Mayer, Austro-German, very fit for accounts and writings; a boatswain, Vranich, who is a real jewel. Thus I hope—with the aid of God—to get on at least as well as under the command of Sodich.“Imagine: Sodich and Lucich were atheists, and Leva has been a Spiritualist. I am happy to have made this change of personnel, with whom alone I shall have intercourse for months and months.“In the first days of July, when everything will be ready, the journey will be continued. Now comes the most difficult part of the passage, i. e., the sailing around the dreadful Cape Horn, which is always exposed to howling storms. If all ends well, we shall be in two months at Valparaiso, which has been so beautifully described by Ludwig. God willing, we shall return from there in good health.“I am very sorry to have received no news or, strictly speaking, no letters of yours. Neither in Ensenada nor in La Plata nor in Buenos Aires, neither poste restante nor in the Consulate, have I found your letters, and still I believe that you have been so good as to write me. I have found letters of Luise, that have been despatched by a German steamer, and also letters from London, as well as of the Swiss Bank, with which I am in communication, but not one letter from Austria. Luise informed me that she has been in Rome, and your dear telegram advised me that she has passed Salzburg. I was sorry to see from the newspapers that Karl has been ill in Baden; I should be happy if this were not true. Then I have read the many nonsensical articles written about myself, and am glad that the Consul, who has remained in communication with me, was able to state the truth. I am also glad of the marriage of Franz, the dream of the young woman is now likely to come to an end. I know nothing about Vienna and Gmünden. But I repeat that I am disappointed at not having received your letters. I hope to God you are well and remain in good health.“My next stay will be at Valparaiso. I, therefore, ask you to address letters: Giovanni Orth, Valparaiso (Chile) poste restante.“Requesting you to give my kind remembrances to the whole family and asking you for your blessing, I respectfully kiss your hands.“Your tenderly loving son,GIOVANNI.”

“I have made the acquaintance of our Consul. The officer is a certain Mikulicz, a cultured, most amiable man. The Honorary Consul is Mihanovich, a man who—a few years ago was a porter—and now is a millionaire. Social obligations have caused much loss of time, which could have been better used for business affairs. Imagine that nothing can be done in Ensenada, but we have always to go to Buenos Aires. And we have to hurry. The unloading of the cargo, negotiations about a new cargo, which I could have accepted if my merchant had not prevented me, changes of the board staff, purchase of supplies, work on board, the collection and despatch of money, &c., &c. The staff-officers have all to be changed. I have the command. Capt. Sodich is offended by the fact that I have sent away here in Plata a certain 'Sensal,’ toward whom he was too indulgent and who was a man of bad reputation. He has given me to understand, in the most impolite manner, that he could not remain under such circumstances, that he did not permit himself to be treated as a mere zero with regard to the business on land, and therefore he resigned the command, &c. I, of course, accepted his resignation, and also remained firm when he afterward returned to excuse himself. The second lieutenant, Lucich, has shown the insolence to deceive the consignee and by calculating forty-eight tons more in favor of the ship, believing to do me a favor by such an action. I have given to the consignee the necessary indemnification—and to restore the compromised honor of the ship, have dismissed the lieutenant. The third lieutenant, Leva, took fright of the sea and quit voluntarily to seek his fortune on land. Also the boatswain Giaconi asked for his dismissal, so much the fire had frightened him.[3]

[3]There had been a fire on theSanta Margaritaon the way to Buenos Aires.

“As present I have First Lieutenant, Jellecich, who acts as Captain and has the command—a man of forty-five years, very quiet, experienced and practical. Further, a Second Lieutenant, Mayer, Austro-German, very fit for accounts and writings; a boatswain, Vranich, who is a real jewel. Thus I hope—with the aid of God—to get on at least as well as under the command of Sodich.

“Imagine: Sodich and Lucich were atheists, and Leva has been a Spiritualist. I am happy to have made this change of personnel, with whom alone I shall have intercourse for months and months.

“In the first days of July, when everything will be ready, the journey will be continued. Now comes the most difficult part of the passage, i. e., the sailing around the dreadful Cape Horn, which is always exposed to howling storms. If all ends well, we shall be in two months at Valparaiso, which has been so beautifully described by Ludwig. God willing, we shall return from there in good health.

“I am very sorry to have received no news or, strictly speaking, no letters of yours. Neither in Ensenada nor in La Plata nor in Buenos Aires, neither poste restante nor in the Consulate, have I found your letters, and still I believe that you have been so good as to write me. I have found letters of Luise, that have been despatched by a German steamer, and also letters from London, as well as of the Swiss Bank, with which I am in communication, but not one letter from Austria. Luise informed me that she has been in Rome, and your dear telegram advised me that she has passed Salzburg. I was sorry to see from the newspapers that Karl has been ill in Baden; I should be happy if this were not true. Then I have read the many nonsensical articles written about myself, and am glad that the Consul, who has remained in communication with me, was able to state the truth. I am also glad of the marriage of Franz, the dream of the young woman is now likely to come to an end. I know nothing about Vienna and Gmünden. But I repeat that I am disappointed at not having received your letters. I hope to God you are well and remain in good health.

“My next stay will be at Valparaiso. I, therefore, ask you to address letters: Giovanni Orth, Valparaiso (Chile) poste restante.

“Requesting you to give my kind remembrances to the whole family and asking you for your blessing, I respectfully kiss your hands.

“Your tenderly loving son,GIOVANNI.”

The vessel was accordingly made ready at Ensenada, and on July 12, 1890, John Orth wrote what proved to be the last communication ever sent by him. It was addressed to his attorney in Vienna and said that he was leaving to join his ship for a trip to Valparaiso, which might consume fifty or sixty days. His captain, Orth wrote, had been taken ill, and his first officer had proved incompetent, so that it had been necessary to discharge him. Accordingly Orth was personally in command of his vessel, aided by the second officer, who was an experienced seaman. This is a somewhat altered version, to be sure.

The apparent intention of the renegade archduke at this time was to follow the sea. He had caused theSanta Margaritato be elaborately refitted inside, had insured her for two hundred and thirty thousand marks with the Hamburg Marine Insurance Company, and he had written his aged mother at Lake Gmünden of his determination to make his living as a mariner and an honest man, instead of existing like an idler on his comfortable private means. There is nothing in the record to indicate that he intended to go into hiding.

~~ ARCHDUKE JOHANN SALVATOR ~~

TheSanta Margaritaaccordingly sailed on the thirteenth of July. With good fortune she should have been in the Straits of Magellan the first week in August, and her arrival at Valparaiso was to be expected not later than the first of September. But the ship did not reach port. The middle of September passed without word of her. When she had still not been reported by the first week in October the alarm was given.

As the result of diplomatic representations from the Austrian minister, the Argentine government soon made elaborate arrangements for a search. On December the second the gunboatBermejo, Captain Don Mensilla, put out from Buenos Aires and made a four months’ cruise of the Argentine coast, visiting every conceivable anchorage where a vessel of theSanta Margarita’ssize might possibly have found refuge. Don Mensilla found that, beginning the night of July 20, and continuing intermittently for nearly a month, there had been storms of the greatest violence in the region of Cape Blanco and the southern extremity of Tierra del Fuego. More than forty vessels which had been in the vicinity in this period reported that the disturbances had been of unusual character and duration, more than sufficient to overwhelm a sailing bark in the tortuous and treacherous Magellan Straits.

Continuing his search, Don Mensilla found that a vessel answering to the general description of theSanta Margaritahad been wrecked off the little island of Nuevo Ano, in the Beagle Canal, in the course of a hurricane which lasted from August 3 to August 5, at which dates theSanta Margaritawas very likely in this vicinity. The Argentine commander could find no trace of the wreck and no clew to any survivors. He continued his search for more than two months longer and then returned to base with his melancholy report.

At the same time the Chilean government had sent out the small steamerToroto search the Pacific coast from Cape Sunday to Cape Penas. Her captain returned after several months with no word of the archduke or any member of his crew.

These investigations, plus the study of logs and reports at the Hamburg maritime observatory, soon convinced most authorities that John Orth and his vessel were at the bottom of the Straits. But in this case, as in that of Roger Tichborne,[4]an old mother’s fond devotion refused to accept the bitter arbitrament of chance. The Grand Duchess Maria Antonia could not bring herself to believe that winds and waves had swallowed up her beloved son. She stormed the court at Vienna with her entreaties, with the result that Franz Josef finally sent out the corvetteSaida, with instructions to make a fresh search, including the islands of the South Seas, whither, according to a fanciful report, John Orth had made his way.

[4]Seepage 82.

At the same time the grand duchess appealed to Pope Leo, and the pontiff requested Catholic missionaries in South America and all over the world to search for John Orth and send immediate news of his presence to the Holy See.

TheSaidareturned to Fiume at the end of a year without having been able to accomplish anything beyond confirming the report of Don Mensilla. And in response to the pope’s letter many reports came back, but none of them resulted in the finding of John Orth.

Shortly after the return of theSaidathe Austrian heirs of John Orth moved for the payment of his insurance, and the Hamburg Marine Insurance Company, after going through the formality of a court proceeding, paid the claim. In 1896 a demand was made on two banks, one in Freiburg and the other in St. Gallen, Switzerland, for moneys deposited with them by the archduke after his departure from Austria in 1889. One of these banks raised the question of the death proof, claiming that thirty years must elapse in the case of an unproved death. The courts decided against the bank, thereby tacitly confirming the contention that the end of the archduke had been sufficiently demonstrated. About two million crowns were accordingly paid over to the Austrian custodians.

In 1909 the court marshal in Vienna was asked to hand over the property of John Orth to his nephew and heir, and this high authority then declared that the missing archduke had been dead since the hurricane of August 3-5, 1890. He, however, asked the supreme court of Austria to pass finally upon the matter, and a decision was handed down on May 9, 1911, in which the archduke was declared dead as of July 21, 1890, the day on which the heavy storms about the Patagonian coasts began. His property was ordered distributed, and his goods and chattels were sold. The books, instruments, art collection and furniture, which had long been preserved in the various villas and castles of the absent prince, were accordingly sold at auction in Berlin, during the months of October and November, 1912.

In spite of the great care that was taken to discover the facts in this case, and in the face of the various official reports and court decisions, a great romantic tradition grew up about John Orth and his mysterious destiny. The episodes of his demotion, his marriage, his abandonment of rank, and his exile had undoubtedly much to do with the birth of the legend. Be that as it may, the world has for more than thirty years been feasted with rumors of the survival of John Orth and his actress wife. In the course of the Russo-Japanese war the story was widely printed that Marshal Yamagato was in reality the missing archduke. The story was credited by many, but there proved to be no foundation for it beyond the fact that the Japanese were using their heavy artillery in a manner originally suggested by the archduke in that old monograph which had got him disciplined.

Ex-Senator Eugenio Garzon of Uruguay is the chief authority for one of the most plausible and insistent of all the John Orth stories. According to this politician and man of letters, there was present at Concordia, in the province of Entre Rios, Argentine Republic, in the years 1899 to 1900 and again from 1903 to 1905, a distinguished looking stranger of military habit and bearing, who had few friends, received few visits, always spoke Italian with a Señor Hirsch, an Austrian merchant of Buenos Aires, and generally conducted himself in a secretive and suggestive manner. Señor Hirsch treated the stranger with marked respect and deference.

Senator Garzon presents the corroborative opinion of theJefe de Policiaof Concordia, an official who firmly believed the man of mystery to be John Orth. On the other hand, Señor Nino de Villa Rey, the closest friend and sometime host of the supposed imperial castaway, denied the identity of his intimate and scoffed at the whole tale. At the same time, say Garzon and the chief of police, Señor de Villa Rey tried to conceal the presence of the man, and it was the activity of the police authorities, executing the law authorizing them to investigate and keep records of the identity of all strangers, that frightened the “archduke” away. He went to Paraguay and worked in a sawmill belonging to Villa Rey. Shortly before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war he left for Japan.

This is evidently the basis of the Yamagato confusion. Senator Garzon’s book is full of doubtful corroboration and too subtle reasoning, but it is rewarding and entertaining for those who like romance and read Spanish.[5]

[5]See Bibliography.

The missing John Orth has likewise been reported alive from many other unlikely parts of the world and under the most incredible circumstances. Austrian, German, British, French, and American newspapers have been full of such stories every few years. The much sought man has been “found” mining in Canada, running a pearl fishery in the Paumotus, working in a factory in Ohio, fighting with the Boers in South Africa, prospecting in Rhodesia, running a grocery store in Texas—what not and where not?

One of the most recent apparitions of John Orth happened in New York. On the last day of March, 1924, a death certificate was filed with the Department of Health formally attesting that Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, the missing archduke, had died early that morning of heart disease in Columbus Hospital, one of the smaller semi-public institutions. Doctor John Grimley, chief surgeon of the hospital, signed the certificate and said he had been convinced of the man’s identity by his “inside knowledge of European diplomacy.”

Mrs. Charlotte Fairchild, “a well-known society photographer,” confirmed the story, and said she had discovered the identity of the man the year before and admitted some of her friends to the secret. He had lately been receiving some code cables from Europe which came collect, and his friends had obligingly supplied the money with which to pay for these mysterious messages. The dead man, said Mrs. Fairchild, had been living as O. N. Orlow, a doctor of philosophy, a lecturer in Sanscrit and general scholar.

“He was a marvelous astrologer and even lectured on Sanscrit,” she recounted. “In his delirium he talked Sanscrit, and it was very beautiful.”

According to the same friend of the “missing archduke,” he had furnished her with the true version of his irruption from the Austrian court in 1889. The emperor Franz Josef had applied a vile name to John Salvator’s mother, whereupon the archduke had drawn his sword, broken it, cast it at his ruler’s feet, ripped off his decorations and medals, flung them into the imperial face and finally blacked the emperor’s eye. Striding from the palace to the barracks, the archduke had found his own cavalry regiment turned out to cry “Hoch!” and offer him its loyalty. He could have dethroned the emperor then and there, he said, but he elected to quit the country and have done with the social life which disgusted him.

This is the kind of story to appeal to romantics the world over. Aside from the preposterousness of the yarn as a whole, one needs only to remember that Johann Salvator was an artillery officer and never held either an active or honorary cavalry command; that he was, at the time of his final exit from Austria, long dismissed from the army and without military rank, and that striking the emperor would have been an offense that must have landed him in prison forthwith. Also, it is obvious that the “missing archduke” was pulling the legs of his friends a bit in the matter of the collect cablegrams. Except in cases where special prearrangements have been made, as in the instances of great newspapers, large business houses, banks, and the departments of government, cablegrams are never sent unless prepaid. An imperial government would hardly thus impose on a wandering scion. The imposture is thus apparent.

On the day after the death of the supposed archduke, however, a note of real drama was injected into the case. Mrs. Grace E. Wakefield, who was said to have been the ward, since her fourteenth birthday, of the dead “archduke,” was found dead in her apartment on East Fifty-ninth Street that afternoon. She had drowned her two parrots and her dog. Then she had got into the bath tub, turned on the water, slashed the arteries of both wrists with a razor, and bled to death. Despondency over “John Orth’s” death was given as the explanation.

These tales have all had their charm, much as they have lacked probability. Each and all they rest upon the single fact that the man was never seen dead. There is, of course, no way of being sure that John Orth perished in the hurricane-swept Straits of Magellan, but it is beyond reasonable question that he did not survive. For he would certainly have answered the pitiful appeals of his old mother, to whom he was devoted, and to whom he had written every few days whenever he had been separated from her. He would have been found by the papal missionaries in some part of the world, and the three vessels sent upon his final course must surely have discovered some trace of the man. It should be remembered that, except for letters that were traced back to harmless cranks, nothing that even looked like a communication was ever received from Orth or Ludmilla Stübel, or from any member of the crew of theSanta Margarita.

In the light of cold criticism this great enigma is not profound. All evidence and all reason point to the probability that Johann Salvator and his ship went down to darkness in some wild torment of waters and winds, leaving neither wreck nor flotsam to mark their exit, but only a void in which the idle minds of romantics could spin their fabulations.

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